The Court of Appeal held that the common law rule from Roe v D'Costa — that before a person is subject to an increased penalty for a second or subsequent offence, the person must have been both committed and convicted of the previous offence on separate days — applies to the penalty provisions of s 63(2) of the Road Traffic Act 1974 (WA) and s 60 RTA, such that offences sentenced together on the same occasion cannot be treated as sequential offences for the purpose of escalating mandatory minimum disqualification periods. The court otherwise found that a sentence of 2 years and 6 months' imprisonment for aggravated reckless driving during a high-speed police pursuit was not manifestly excessive, and that the total effective sentence of 4 years and 9 months did not infringe the first limb of the totality principle given the seriousness and persistence of the offending.
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