Removing Traffic Licence Points
Your licence is your livelihood

Adv. Yaron Bokobza (in Hebrew, 79 seconds)

Why points catch out law-abiding drivers in particular

What surprises people who come to me is not the single ticket — it is the accumulation. Someone pays a speeding fine, six months later a phone-use fine, and a year after that something else minor. Each one looks at the time like a technicality closed by payment. Then a letter arrives from the Licensing Authority, and they discover they have reached a threshold requiring a course — or worse, that their licence is at risk.

What creates the trap is the gap between how it feels and how the mechanism works. To the driver, paying a fine closes the matter. In the mechanism, payment is an admission, and the points are recorded automatically. There is no intermediate stage where someone stops and asks whether you understood.

Hence the single most practical rule on this page: do not pay a ticket before checking whether it carries points and how many. That check takes minutes, and it is the difference between a file that closes and a file that begins.

Four things examined in every points case

First — the accuracy of the record. The register maintained by the Licensing Authority is not immune to error. I encounter cases where points were recorded for an offence that was misclassified, recorded twice, or attributed to the wrong driver where a family or company vehicle is involved. A simple cross-check between the register and the actual tickets is the first step, and it sometimes resolves the case without a fight.

Second — whether any ticket can still be challenged. Not every ticket has become final. If one is still within the period, an application to be tried can be filed and the evidence examined: the calibration of the measuring device, the angle of the photograph, the conditions on the ground. Cancelling a single ticket can bring a driver below the threshold and remove the requirement entirely.

Third — whether the decision meets the rules. A decision of the Licensing Authority must rest on correct data. Where it is based on a faulty accumulation, or where no proper opportunity was given to present arguments, there is room to appeal.

Fourth — the personal circumstances. A driver whose licence is their tool of trade, a sole provider, or someone who must take a family member to treatment — these are circumstances worth presenting, and they may affect the decision or its scope.

When time works against you — and when for you

In points cases time runs in two opposite directions. On one hand, points are erased on their own after a set period, provided no further points accumulate. A driver close to the threshold who drives carefully may see the balance fall without doing anything.

On the other hand, every avenue of challenge is bound by a deadline. An application to be tried is filed within a fixed period. An appeal against a decision is filed within a fixed period. Once the deadline has passed, even a very good argument may be barred on procedural grounds — not because it is wrong, but because we were late.

The practical conclusion: the moment a letter arrives from the Licensing Authority, or a ticket you are unsure about — do not put it aside. Even if you eventually decide there is nothing to be done, it is better to make that decision knowingly, while the options are still open.

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