Jerry Murphy Liverpool
Answer
You should expect a minimum twelve month ban and a compulsory retest on all of your licences.
The Courts take a very hard line on wheelies. They are obviously deliberate and if they are not deliberate and you wheelied by accident, then you shouldn’t be on the road anyway.
The prosecution will very easily read evidence, usually from one of the Class 1 police motorcycle instructors that between 60% – 80% of a motorcycles braking efficiency comes from the front wheel, which at the time of the incident was up in the air. Secondly, you will be found inevitably to have substantially obscured your forward vision. Thirdly, you have also done it in a 40mph limit and you don’t say whether or not there was pavement by the side of the road, but I assume there was. You also failed to notice a marked police car, so all in all, you are nicked.
There is very little merit in offering a not guilty plea, because you will inevitably be found guilty of the serious offence of dangerous driving. You will receive a one year ban and an extended retest for all classes of licence which you hold, not just motorcycle and you should anticipate a fine representing at least two or three weeks take home pay, if you are lucky. The starting point usually for these is a community service order of sixty or more hours. If you have a particularly bad driving record, the Courts can consider a custodial sentence and they will.
Andrew Dalton