False Driver Identification on a Traffic Fine: When It Becomes a Crime (Arts. 392 and 456 CP)

When a traffic fine arrives carrying a loss of points or a heavy penalty, the temptation to attribute the driving to someone else to escape it is not uncommon. The duty to identify the driver is, in itself, an administrative obligation; but identifying someone FALSELY can cross the line into criminal law and amount to document forgery (Article 392 CP) or false accusation (Article 456 CP). As criminal defence lawyers in road safety, we explain where the line lies, what penalties are at stake and how the defence is built.

The Duty to Identify the Driver: an Administrative Framework

The starting point is administrative. Article 11.1 of the Act on Traffic, Motor Vehicle Circulation and Road Safety (consolidated text approved by Royal Legislative Decree 6/2015) requires the registered keeper of the vehicle — and, where applicable, the long-term lessee or the habitual driver — to truthfully identify the driver responsible for the offence when the authorities so request.

Breach of that duty also has an administrative response: Article 76.j of the same Act classes failing to identify the driver, or doing so incompletely, falsely or without justification, as a very serious infringement. The penalty is a fine of double the one set for the original offence if it was minor, or triple if it was serious or very serious. So far, everything stays within administrative penalty law.

From Administrative Breach to the Criminal Leap

The nature of the matter changes when the keeper does not merely fail to identify the driver, but names a person who was not driving: a relative, a friend, an employee, someone deceased, or even a non-existent identity. This is no longer a simple silence punished administratively, but a possible deceptive act towards the authorities that may have a criminal dimension.

Two offences most frequently come into play:

• Forgery of an official document by a private individual (Article 392 CP), where a document with false identity details is submitted to the authorities.
• False accusation or denunciation (Article 456 CP), where the offence is attributed to a specific third party before an official under a duty to investigate it.

The underlying motive — avoiding a fine, escaping the loss of points or dodging a possible disqualification from driving — is not irrelevant, but it does not, on its own, transform the classification. What matters is the means used to evade responsibility: that is, whether the truth has been departed from in a relevant way before the authorities and on what documentary basis. A single objective (not taking on the fine) may therefore end up being criminally irrelevant, a mere administrative infringement, or an offence, depending on how it was carried out.

Document Forgery by a Private Individual (Art. 392 CP)

Article 392 CP punishes a private individual who commits, in a public, official or commercial document, one of the forgeries set out in the first three paragraphs of Article 390.1. The penalty is six months to three years in prison and a fine of six to twelve months.

The driver-identification statement that the keeper sends to the authorities in response to a request may qualify as a document with official significance: it is incorporated into an administrative file and produces effects in legal dealings. If it deliberately records the identity of a false or non-existent driver, asserts as true a fact that is not, and alters an essential element of the document, the forgery limbs of Article 390 to which Article 392 refers may be made out.

Two qualifications are worth noting:

• Not every inaccuracy is criminal forgery. Settled case law of the Spanish Supreme Court requires the alteration of the truth to bear on essential elements of the document and to be capable of causing harm or inducing error in legal dealings.
• The precise classification depends on the facts: on the type of document, how it is drawn up and who is actually named.

False Accusation or Denunciation (Art. 456 CP)

Article 456 CP punishes anyone who, knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard for the truth, attributes to a person acts which, if true, would constitute a criminal offence, where that allegation is made before a judicial or administrative official under a duty to investigate it. The penalty is graded by the seriousness of what is alleged:

• If a serious offence is alleged: six months to two years in prison and a fine of twelve to twenty-four months.
• If a less serious offence is alleged: a fine of twelve to twenty-four months.
• If a minor offence is alleged: a fine of three to six months.

In the context of traffic fines, attributing the driving — and with it the responsibility for the offence — to a third party may trigger this offence where what is alleged has criminal relevance, for example if the underlying conduct was a road-safety crime, and the allegation is directed at the official who must investigate it. If what is attributed is merely an administrative infringement, the fit with Article 456 CP is more debatable, and the criminal reproach tends to be channelled towards document forgery.

One point that practice often overlooks is worth stressing: Article 456 CP does not require the person falsely named to be convicted, or even thoroughly investigated; the offence is complete once the untruthful allegation reaches the person under a duty to look into the facts. The reproach therefore does not depend on the manoeuvre succeeding, but on having set the machinery of authority in motion on the basis of a deliberate lie. The boundary with document forgery is not always clear-cut: where the attribution to a third party is channelled through a false identification statement, both provisions may overlap, and it must be analysed whether they apply in concurrence or whether one displaces the other.

The False Driver Who Agrees: the Consent Trap

A widespread belief is that, if the person named voluntarily agrees to appear as the driver, there is no problem. That is a mistake. A third party agreeing to take on an offence they did not commit does not make the identification truthful: it remains false before the authorities.

As a result, both the keeper who submits the false identification and the person who agrees to appear as the driver without having been one may be exposed. A third party's consent neither cures a document forgery nor defuses the deception of the authorities. Moreover, systematically taking on other people's points or penalties can draw the attention of the authorities and trigger an investigation.

The Honest Mistake: the Boundary with Non-Criminality

Not every mistaken identification is a crime. Both offences require intent: the awareness and will to depart from the truth. Outside the criminal reproach lie cases of honest mistake, which are common in practice:

• Shared-use vehicles (family cars, company fleets, courtesy cars) where the keeper does not know for certain who was driving on a specific date and time.
• Reasonable confusion about the person when recalling a journey far back in time.
• Transcription errors in personal details with no intent to mislead.

The line between punishable forgery and a harmless mistake is precisely one of the axes of the defence: showing that there was no intent to lie, but rather an honest error, leads to criminal non-liability, without prejudice to any administrative consequences.

Lines of Defence

The defence against a charge of false driver identification is built on several lines, verifiable case by case:

• Absence of intent. Demonstrating an honest mistake or reasonable uncertainty about who was driving rules out the subjective element of both offences.
• Insufficiency of the punishable forgery. Not every inaccuracy reaches the threshold required by Article 392 CP: it must bear on essential elements and be capable of causing harm.
• Administrative nature of what is alleged. If what is attributed to the third party is merely a traffic infringement, the fit with Article 456 CP — designed for criminal allegations — is called into question.
• Challenging the evidence. Review of the administrative file, the identification request, its service and the documentary chain underpinning the charge.
• Concurrence and classification. Pinning down precisely whether the facts amount to forgery, false accusation, both in concurrence, or neither, since the penalty and the strategy depend on it.

Each case calls for its own technical and legal analysis, without anticipating outcomes and with the utmost discretion.

Criminal Defence in Road Safety

The criminal-law firm Alonso Sala, based in Madrid (calle Velázquez 27) and acting throughout Spain, takes on the defence in proceedings arising from driver identification, document forgery and road-safety offences. We analyse the administrative file, whether intent is present and how the facts genuinely fit within Articles 392 and 456 CP, and we design a strategy tailored to each scenario. You can read more about this service on our page on defence in driver identification.