its like having a discussion with TJ.

Is that a compliment?

Unless you were in court to hear the evidence in each of those cases you are speculating on what did or did not cause or contribute to the accident, and how or why a particular verdict has been reached.

So are you. The thing is, if there wasn’t a pattern to this you might have a point. But there is a pattern which suggests that the offences motorists who kill cyclists are being charged with and the sentences being handed down to them when convicted are unduly lenient.

Your knowledge appears to be based on media reports, which are subject to conformational bias.

Are you now suggesting that the media reports are inaccurate? Did the driver of the taxi not really say he “didn’t see him” before he hit the cyclist? Did the passenger of the taxi not actually call out a warning to the driver having seen the cyclist? Exactly what is it the media report is missing here that makes driving along and failing to see a cyclist your passenger has seen not dangerous driving (by the legal definition)? What is it that makes this offence so far from dangerous driving that the judge sticks it in the lowest possible category when determining the tariff?

I have a somewhat wider experience of the ‘reality’

Oh, so how many cases of DBDD or DBCD involving a cyclist have you been directly involved with?

aracer – Member

Not only are the drivers who plow into the back of cyclists not being convicted of DBDD, the sentences they’re getting for DBCD suggests the judge sees it as being not even anywhere near DBDD.

Death by dangerous driving carries an incredibly high burden of proof, that is it is very difficult to convict someone of the offence.
Death by careless driving is a very new offence which was introduced specifically to allow a conviction to occur more easily (which would have been far less likely with DBDD) and provide the courts the ability to impose harsher sentences than those afforded to lesser charges.
That doesn’t suggest that everything is being done to protect guilty drivers now, does it?
If you think judges are ignoring sentencing guidelines for specific offences, I suggest you contact your local MP.

Looking at the links you have put up I suspect that like me your knowledge of what is going on in our courts is filtered by what makes it to the press and how it is presented is “spun” by whatever angle the media chose to put on the case (what the driver got away, how light the sentence was etc). I suspect poly (and noid above who answered a few thoughts of mine) have a better and less “filtered” understanding of what passes through our courts than you and I do. What makes it to the press and therefore easy to acccess internet pages is far from the totality.

Spun? Those articles are hardly opinion pieces. I ask again, exactly what other information could there possibly be to make running into the back of a cyclist because you didn’t see them not at least very close to dangerous driving? Yes I am basing my comments on the reported information, but unless the reporters are lying then it’s hard to see what information we’re missing. You don’t have to be a professional to read and understand the sentencing guidelines, and it’s clear that no amount of mitigation and previous good character of the defendant could possibly result in the low sentences being given unless the judge considered the offence itself to be of the lowest possible level for the offence the motorist was charged with.

BTW it’s not just me with this opinion – others with legal training and access to far more details of the cases have the same opinion.

Yes I am basing my comments on the reported information, but unless the reporters are lying then it’s hard to see what information we’re missing.

What we might well be missing is the fact that the cases that make it to press “might*” be a small fraction of the ones that are in court. And the reason they are making it to press is because they are newsworthy. And the reason they are considered newsworthy (by the media) is because very often they are scandelous. And the reason they are scandelous is often because they are too lenient a sentence from a lay person’s perpective. I’m not contesting that on the face of it the cases you read about in the press are not dubious in terms of sentencing; but rather what you read in the press is not the outcome of every case – just the chosen ones, the reporting of which sells newspapers.

imo – to truely believe that what you read in the press acturately reflects everything that goes on in UK courts in terms of proportion and outcome would be misguided.

* – the reason I say “might” is because like you I only know about those ones and what fraction they make up of all the cases going through UK courts – I guess you would need to be in the business to have a genuine handle on the numbers.

Aracer – I wrote you a long reply but I think its best summed up as: spend some time in courts listening to trials it will open your eyes. If you sit through a full trial you will probably have heard more than any journo who might report on it. If you can’t / won’t do that then have a look here: http://ybtj.justice.gov.uk/ – although I don’t think there are any DBDD cases, you might be surprised how often the sentences the public pick agree with the judiciary; despite what the media might imply.

DBDD was invented because Manslaughter was too hard to prove. DBCD was invented because DBDD was too hard to prove.

poly – I’m not suggesting that sentences in general are too lenient, just that sentences for killing cyclists with a car are too lenient (when compared to sentencing guidelines). Hence it’s pretty pointless sending me to that site – I had a look at a few and agreed with the sentences given, which didn’t surprise me in the least – nothing I saw there is news to me. I might not have sat through a court case but I do know rather more about the justice system than you seem to think – I’m well aware of sentencing guidelines, mitigation factors, aggravating factors etc. The point remains that judges consistently select the lowest category when sentencing (before considering any mitigating factors, as it would not be possible to give a sentence that low if the judge had selected a higher category) in DBCD cases involving cyclists. We come back to the same point – is running down a cyclist because you didn’t see them really not “driving in a manner which falls FAR below that of a competent driver”? Or at the very least “Careless or inconsiderate driving falling not far short of dangerous driving”, which is what a judge could decide given a DBCD guilty verdict and use the highest category. Instead judges consistently consider such action to be “Careless or inconsiderate driving arising from momentary inattention with no aggravating factors” – despite the very obvious aggravating factor you mention that the victim was a vulnerable road user around whom drivers are expected to take extra care (the cases on that site you linked to makes it clear that the status of the victim can be an aggravating factor). Given that judges are at the least ignoring the “vulnerable road user” issue it is clear that the system isn’t working properly is it?

Nor is it reporting bias as has been suggested – I’ve followed enough cases from before the sentencing and seen the sentences given for that not to be the case.

DBDD was invented because Manslaughter was too hard to prove. DBCD was invented because DBDD was too hard to prove.

Too hard to get a jury to return a guilty verdict on maybe, which might be “hard to prove” in a strict legal sense. The problem though is that juries appear to apply a different standard of “reasonable doubt” in such cases. Not something we’re going to change any time soon, and I understand the need for DBCD and the reason why people are charged with that. Though there appears to be no reason not to charge people with both DBDD and DBCD if the CPS are unsure about getting a conviction on the higher charge – which gives the lie to the claim sometimes made that a DBDD charge is not brought as they want to get a conviction for something. The point is still that judges who should be above such issues don’t even generally consider cases to be “almost” DBDD when any properly objective test would determine the actions of the driver to be dangerous driving (even if a jury would be unlikely to return a guilty verdict for DBDD).

Oh and well done Bradley!

We appear to disagree on how road traffic offences are in general dealt with by the judicial system. Your knowledge appears to be based on media reports, which are subject to conformational bias. I have a somewhat wider experience of the ‘reality’ although I accept it is also not without its biases. If you want to analyse the stats they are on the web – although I don’t think they are granular enough to identify cyclist casualties.

There does seem to be a consistent trend though – it’s not like there are a lot of other cases where the courts are passing down long sentences that are not getting reported. In case after case where drivers kill or seriously injure the courts are unable to convict or hand down derisory punishments

I think alot of road cyclists are really unaware of how to get from A to B without getting knocked off.

I wonder how many have heard of a lifesaver? I rekon a huge number of deaths could be avoided with some sort of awareness campaign on the telly like the ones we have for motorcyclists.

no you’re not allowed on the pavement but **** it, I’m on my way to B and I’ll be needing every limb when i get there.

amedias – Member
This case makes me very sad, and I feel for everyone involved (yes even the guy who opened the door).

The reality is several people made mistakes of varying degrees on that day.

A man* riding a bike was not giving enough room when passing parked cars.
A man* getting out of his car didn’t check it was clear.
A man* driving a bus was driving close enough that he was not able to stop.

In isolation none of these things would have caused this chain of events, and the same mistakes are made time and time again by people every day with no consequences at all.

But on this day they all happened together, in the same place, at the same time, and a man lost his life.

It is very very sad in every respect.

* I refuse to label them as cyclist, motorist etc, they were people going about their daily business, and the more we can drum into everyone that we are all people sharing the roads the better

Amen.

I’d like to pick up on this… “He had had the windows of his car coated with a dark plastic film which reduced visibility in and out of the car to 17%, the Old Bailey heard.“.

That’s obviously illegal, but looking (or not in this case) in a mirror through a tinted window would reduce that figure dramatically, making the mirrors redundant (extra illegal). To me, this modification was the reason the door had to be opened in the first place.

@carltonreid: RT @BBCNWT: Lancashire dentist Kay Nolan, who killed a pedestrian after losing control of her car while texting, walks free from court.

Are we seeing a trend yet?

Here’s the news report that simons-nicolai refers to ^^:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-20756689

Bez has written some good stuff on his blog about the recent high profile cases of drivers being let off or handed down pathetic punishments on his blog:
http://singletrackworld.com/2012/12/an-open-letter-to-the-british-judicial-system-by-stewart-pratt/

There really needs to be a masisve culture change regarding driving and a change in the law regards sentencing.
At the moment, anyone could go out and run someone over and probably get away with murder. Why bother with the mess and hassle of a knife or gun? 🙁

On the other hand, what’s the betting that the media will be baying for the cyclists blood on this one:
http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/Man-dies-collision-country-lane/story-17609643-detail/story.html?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

For whatever difference it makes- in the Stuart Mather/Kay Nolan case, the court found that she wasn’t texting when she hit him. She had pulled in to write the text, pulled away before pressing send (why?) but had finished before the collision.

I wanted to say somewhere thanks to Bez/Stewart for the blog article and to those who commented on it about Early Day Motion 679 and writing to our MP’s about these issues. (Can’t comment on that page as I’m not a *premier* so this thread seems appropriate…)

It has resulted in me indulging in a little single-issue politics and I have written to my MP to pester him about signing that EDM and to ask him to consider how we can make the roads safer, and to support any measures that seek to do that.

Drivers need to be reconnected with the potential consequences of their actions, and these lightweight sentences are doing precisely the opposite.