Sometimes you need to borrow your dad’s car. Sometimes you may really want to as well, particularly if he has a 2024 BMW M3 Competition.
When you have a provisional licence, though, that’s not an option. And when dad’s M3 is painted Sao Paulo Yellow, it makes it a lot easier for police to spot you…
According to the NSW Police Force Traffic and Highway Patrol Command’s Facebook page, a 17-year-old school student was spotted driving an M3 Competition then made a left as soon as police turned around to follow him.
Unfortunately for the driver, that ended up being a dead-end street. He allegedly parked his vehicle in front of a driveway and hopped out, only for police to catch up with him.
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According to NSW police, the driver claimed he had no idea his father’s M3 Competition was classified as a high-performance vehicle prohibited for use by P-platers.
In NSW, both P1 and P2 provisional licence holders are banned from driving high-performance vehicles with a power to tare mass ratio of greater than 130kW per tonne.
They also can’t drive vehicles with modified engines that need to be approved by an engineer, or one which “has other specifications or data suggesting that it is a high risk for novice drivers”. You can find out more on the NSW Government website.
The NSW Government will grant exemptions to these rules only in “exceptional circumstances”, or if a prohibited vehicle needs to be driven for genuine work purposes.
If a P1 or P2 licence holder in NSW is caught driving a prohibited vehicle, they’ll cop a penalty of seven demerit points and a $704 fine – as this driver in this case did.
There are also separate penalties for falsely claiming to have an exemption to drive a prohibited vehicle, and for not displaying P-plates. The latter resulted in a further $330 fine and two demerit points for this M3 driver.
Given P1 licence holders, along with learner drivers, have a demerit point limit of four points and P2 holders have a seven-point limit, borrowing dad’s high-performance vehicle without a valid exemption can affect more than just your bank balance.
P1 and P2 licence holders who go over their demerit point limit will have their licence suspended, and it won’t be renewable for three months.