Kurt Haendlmayer caught speeding on M1 smart motorway | York Press

Sheffield magistrates decided to allow Kurt Haendlmayer, 60, to keep using the roads so that he could continue to see patients.

The 60-year-old, of Seventh Avenue, Tang Hall, was clocked by a speed camera doing 86 mph on the M1 northbound carriageway between Junctions 30 and 31 in South Yorkshire just past midnight on October 25. That stretch of the M1 is a four-lane smart motorway with no hard shoulder.

He pleaded guilty to speeding. As he already had points on his licence, the speeding offence made him liable for a ban of at least six months.

Haendlmayer attended the sentencing hearing and told the bench it would be extremely difficult for him to do his job if he didn’t have a driving licence and his patients would therefore suffer hardship.

Magistrates decided not to ban him on the grounds it would cause exceptional hardship. They added three penalty points to his licence.

He was warned that if he committed another motoring offence in the next three years, he couldn’t use the same reason to avoid a driving ban again.

He was fined £500 and ordered to pay a £200 statutory surcharge and £100 prosecution costs.