The Road Traffic Regulation (Northern Ireland) Order 1997

Contravening speed limit N.I.

43.—(1) Subject to paragraphs (2) and (3), any person who contravenes a speed limit fixed by or under any enactment (including this Part) is guilty of an offence.

(2) Where a restricted road leads directly into or out of an unrestricted road which is a public road, it shall be a good defence for any person charged with an offence under this Article for exceeding the speed limit applicable to the restricted road to prove that he entered on the restricted road from the unrestricted road and that at the time when he did so adequate guidance was not given by means of traffic signs required to be erected under Article 41 as to the place where the restriction began.

(3) It shall be a good defence for a person charged with an offence under this Article for contravening an order under Article 38 or 40 to prove that he entered on the road on which the offence is alleged to have been committed from a road on which no speed limit was in force or in respect of which a different speed limit was in force and that at the time of his entry he did not know and had no reasonable means of knowing that a speed limit was in force in respect of the road on which he entered.

(4) In any proceedings for an offence committed in contravention of Article 36 a certificate of an officer of the Department stating that a system of street lighting furnished by means of lamps placed not more than 185 metres apart was at the time when the offence is alleged to have been committed provided on any length of road specified in the certificate shall be evidence of the facts certified, and a document purporting to be such a certificate and to be signed by such an officer shall be deemed to be such a certificate unless the contrary is shown.

(5) If—

(a) a person who employs another person to drive a motor vehicle gives any direction under which any journey is to be completed within some specified time; and

(b) it is not practicable in the circumstances of the case at the time of the giving of the direction for that journey to be completed in the specified time without contravening a speed limit as mentioned in paragraph (1),

the giving of the direction shall be received as prima facie evidence that the employer procured or, as the case may be, incited the person employed by him to drive the vehicle to contravene that speed limit.