Well, it depends on whether you believe everyone is, to borrow from the US Declaration of Independence, endowed with inalienable rights.

Here in the States there’s actually a legal defense, Necessity . This is the same category under which self defense lies, that if a crime committed is necessary to preserve life and well being it may be justified or exculpable.

Usually the justifying life and limb cannot exceed the harm done by the crime. So in the case of cannibalism (which was mentioned elsewhere in this thread) one isn’t justified to kill someone else to preserve their own life, but if they happen to be dead already, it’s justified to eat their remains to live (as per the Donner Party incident – though in that case, they decided to eat their fallen after considerable deliberation)

It gets weird when, say, a mother breaks into a pharmacy and steals very expensive medicines in order to keep her kids alive because the price of the medications raises questions as to the value of a human life.

Now in the US, the courts are terribly corrupt, and thanks to prior incidents exculpation based on circumstances (e.g. Dan White’s twinkie defense) federal and state courts in the US are less likely to actually consider circumstances without some top lawyer guns making a big stink (usually hiring expert witnesses to painstakingly explain why those circumstances make a difference). So if you’re poor enough that you need to steal bread to live, you’re probably not going to benefit from a necessity defense, even when it should be valid.

Licenses are a wrongdoing against the state, and behaviors are licensed by the state allegedly in protection of the interests of the public. Licensed driving is to assure one is qualified to drive, so the wrongdoing against the community doesn’t happen until the driver is involved in an incident that brings harm to others (or to other public interests, such as the environment – driving into a lake would count).

But where this goes under necessity is that her occupation, and thus her survival may depend on her capacity to drive, and if the state is going to strip her of license, it has to take that into consideration, or deal with the consequences of motivating more crime.