Restricted licences for dangerous driving, reckless driving, and other serious offences

If you have lost your licence for a serious traffic offence in Tasmania, a restricted licence may still be possible. However, the bar is higher than it is for more common offences like low-range drink driving or demerit point suspensions. For serious offences, the court gives significant weight to public safety when deciding whether to grant a restricted licence, and the strength of your hardship case needs to match the seriousness of what happened.

This page explains how restricted licence eligibility works for dangerous driving and other serious non-RSA offences, what the court looks at when deciding your application, and why legal advice matters more in these cases than most.

The offences covered by this page are serious driving charges that sit outside the Road Safety (Alcohol and Drugs) Act 1970. They are generally prosecuted under the Criminal Code Act 1924 (Tas) or the Vehicle and Traffic Act 1999 (Tas) and include:

• Dangerous driving — driving in a manner dangerous to the public, charged under the Criminal Code.
• Reckless driving — driving at a speed or in a manner that is reckless, having regard to all the circumstances.
• Evading police — failing to stop when directed by a police officer, or driving in a manner intended to evade police.
• Driving causing death or serious injury — the most serious category, where the driving resulted in the death of or grievous bodily harm to another person.

What these offences have in common is that they involve conduct the court views as a serious risk to public safety. That characterisation shapes the entire restricted licence application.

The good news is that these offences do not trigger the absolute statutory bars that apply to drink and drug driving convictions. Because these are non-RSA offences, the restrictions in section 19(1A) of the Road Safety (Alcohol and Drugs) Act 1970 do not apply. There is no BAC threshold to worry about, no prescribed vehicle exclusion under the RSA Act, and no automatic bar for provisional licence holders based on the offence type alone.

Instead, eligibility is assessed under section 18 of the Vehicle and Traffic Act 1999. Under section 18(1), you can apply for a restricted licence if you held an Australian driver licence (other than a learner licence) at the time the licence was suspended or cancelled. If you held a full licence or a provisional licence, the threshold requirement is met and you are entitled to make an application.

Being entitled to apply, however, is not the same as being likely to succeed. For serious offences, the real battleground is not statutory eligibility but the court's assessment of the public interest.

Under section 18(5) of the Vehicle and Traffic Act 1999, the court must be satisfied of three things before it will grant a restricted licence:

• The disqualification is causing or will cause severe and unusual hardship to you or your dependants.
• A restricted licence would mitigate or alleviate that hardship.
• The restricted licence would not be contrary to the public interest.

It is the third limb — section 18(5)(c) — that makes serious offence applications genuinely difficult. The more serious the offence, the stronger your hardship case needs to be to overcome the public interest concern. A marginal hardship argument that might succeed after a low-range drink driving offence is unlikely to persuade the court after a dangerous driving conviction.

In practical terms, this means that applicants with serious offences need to present more compelling evidence of hardship, and often need to demonstrate steps they have taken since the offence to address the risk they pose on the road.

The court balances the hardship the applicant faces against the risk to community safety. There is no fixed formula. The assessment is fact-specific, and the court considers the full picture. Factors that typically weigh into the analysis include:

• Nature and seriousness of the offence — dangerous driving at high speed through a residential area is viewed differently from a momentary lapse of attention. The court will look at what you actually did.
• Whether anyone was injured — if the offence resulted in injury or death, the public interest argument is substantially harder. The court is reluctant to put someone back on the road whose driving has already harmed another person.
• Your driving history — a single serious offence on an otherwise clean record is viewed more favourably than a pattern of dangerous or irresponsible driving.
• The period of disqualification — a longer disqualification reflects the sentencing court's view of the seriousness of the offence, and the restricted licence court will take that into account.
• Rehabilitation steps — what you have done since the offence matters. Completing a defensive driving course, undertaking counselling, or demonstrating other steps to address the underlying behaviour can support the argument that you are no longer a risk.

The court is not applying a mechanical test. It is making a judgment call about whether, in all the circumstances, it is appropriate to allow you to drive again under conditions. Your job is to give the court enough material to feel confident that doing so is safe.

If you committed the offence while already disqualified from driving, the situation becomes significantly more difficult. You can technically still apply for a restricted licence — for non-RSA offences, there is no automatic statutory bar equivalent to section 19(1A)(a) of the RSA Act. But the practical reality is that the public interest argument becomes very hard to win.

The court will view driving during a period of disqualification as a serious aggravating factor. It shows a willingness to disregard a court order, which directly undermines the foundation of a restricted licence application. The entire purpose of a restricted licence is to allow controlled driving under court-imposed conditions. If you have already demonstrated that you will drive when a court has told you not to, the court will have little confidence that you will comply with restricted licence conditions.

This is not an absolute bar, and the court retains discretion. But it is one of the hardest factual scenarios in which to succeed, and strong legal representation is essential if you intend to make the application.

For serious offences, the court's discretion plays a larger role in the outcome than it does for more straightforward applications. The statutory eligibility criteria may be met, but success depends on the quality of the application, the strength of the evidence, and how the hardship and public interest arguments are framed.

A well-prepared application with strong evidence of hardship and rehabilitation is critical. This typically means:

• Detailed evidence of hardship — employer letters, medical evidence, evidence of caring responsibilities, information about available transport alternatives.
• Evidence of rehabilitation — course completion certificates, counselling records, references from community members.
• Carefully drafted proposed conditions that address the court's safety concerns.
• A legal submission that acknowledges the seriousness of the offence while making a persuasive case for why a restricted licence is nonetheless appropriate.

If you have lost your licence for a serious offence and want to explore whether a restricted licence is an option, the first step is to speak with a lawyer who can assess your specific circumstances. See our page on how to apply for a restricted licence for a step-by-step overview of the process.