Points calculator

The register knows three sizes of entry. One point is an ordinary listed administrative offence. Two points is a serious one, and also most criminal traffic offences. Three points is a criminal offence that came with withdrawal of the licence or a bar on reissuing it.

Which offences sit in which list is not a judgement call — it is an annex to the driving-licence ordinance, three literal lists of catalogue rows. That annex is also why this site's tables show a points column at all: the fine catalogue itself has no points column, so every points value here is a documented join between two instruments.

A total of 1 to 3 points is recorded and nothing else happens. At 4 to 5 points the authority issues an Ermahnung, a formal admonition. At 6 to 7 points it issues a Verwarnung, a written warning. At 8 the licence is withdrawn, and at that point it is not a discretionary decision — the statute treats the holder as unfit.

Ranges matter more than they look. Because each rung covers a span, arriving at a rung and then adding another point does not necessarily move you up: the measure attaches to the range you are in. And if a rung is skipped because measures were issued out of order, the total is reset down to that rung's own ceiling — to 5 where an admonition was missed, or 7 where a warning was, as at the date the notice was issued. That reset is a genuine mechanism, not a favour.

Expiry runs per entry, from the date that entry became final, and the period depends on the entry's size: 2,5 years for a one-point offence, 5 years for a two-point one, 10 years for the three-point class.

The longest class has a clock of its own: it starts not when the decision became final but when a new licence is granted, with a backstop so that it cannot run for ever. And an expired entry is not immediately a deleted entry — there is a further holdover period of 1 year during which an expired entry still exists on the register with restricted use. Expired and erased are two different states, and only the second is oblivion.

One more path clears everything: where a licence is newly granted after it was withdrawn, the point total is wiped, subject to carve-outs in the statute.

A driver-aptitude seminar can remove 1 point, but only from a standing of 1 to 5 points, at most once in 5 years, and only if the certificate is submitted within 14 days of the seminar ending. Both the eligibility check and the multi-year lock key on the date the certificate was issued.

Above that standing the statute expressly rules the credit out. Which means the seminar is a tool for the lower half of the ladder, not a way back from the top of it.