[Closed] Another driver gets let off

He's not been let off.

There was a lot of contradictory evidence. Some drivers stating that daylight conditions were good, sme saying bad. Police officer stating it was good when he arrived at the scene. Driver (obviously) stating it was bad.

The jury had a hard time distinguishing between careless and dangerous driving by all accounts.

Ah yes but he is a cheery middle aged fireman (from the picture) and clearly can do no wrong, plus he didnt twitter about it.

Drac - Moderator
He's not been let off.

sorry tabloid headline there

what is the difference between sentencing for careless over dangerous?

Ah yes but he is a cheery middle aged fireman (from the picture) and clearly can do no wrong, plus he didnt twitter about it.

He was the cyclist, not the driver.

Sancho - Member
Ah yes but he is a cheery middle aged fireman (from the picture) and clearly can do no wrong, plus he didnt twitter about it.

i think that was the cyclist

Yes there is which is why they have to decide which they will be prosecuted with, top of my head I can't recall the difference. However I've been called to court for a death by dangerous driving case to give evidence through work, it took about 4 days for the jury to decide which it would be. So don't think it's just a case of them picking it by will.

It's tragic and I do think the reflectors and lights thing has been won by a good defence lawyer arguing a point but people have to realise that court process isn't straight forward. That said some sentencing has been an utter joke.

Maybe if the cyclist had been looking behind 100% of the time he might have been 'taking more care of himself'?.........

ah yeah, youre right,

Listening to Oxford radio yesterday, he was hit bloody hard, hard enough to fling him over a hedge. I think it took the jury a day to come to the verdict of careless driving.

eating a sandwich is paramount to using a phone, I know as like most of us I have tried it and opening plastic and avoiding crumbs everywhere really should be done when stopped.

its now getting to the point that I read one of these threads every day... how many must die before society finally accepts it isnt right to kill cyclists.

its now getting to the point that I read one of these threads every day... how many must die before society finally accepts it isnt right to kill cyclists.

I've said this before. An ad campaign targetting the myths:

YOU DONT PAY ****ING ROAD TAX ****!
Answer - I pay 20% vat on many items on my bike and I also pay road tax on two cars that I own and drive.

(BLACK CAB DRIVER) GET OFF MY ROAD!!:
How much tax do you really pay on your self-assessed (cough massaged) earnings compared to my job?

YOU SHOULD HAVE A LICENCE PLATE
You have a licence plate on your car, look at the fat-good its done for the country having you on the road.

[url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23587916 ]BBC article on why cycling is now so good in Holland [/url]

this shows why the Dutch look after cyclists. we should do the same.

My first thought on reading the article was of 12 jurors looking at the accused and thinking "there but for the grace of God go I"

I've said this before. An ad campaign targetting the myths:

YOU DONT PAY * ROAD TAX *!
Answer - I pay 20% vat on many items on my bike and I also pay [b]road tax[/b] on two cars that I own and drive.

😀

Are careless driving and dangerous driving distinguished by intent? or is it a judgement based on action, circumstance etc?

My first thought on reading the article was of 12 jurors looking at the accused and thinking "there but for the grace of God go I"

Which is why trial by jury in some cases is a joke.
[url= http://thecyclingsilk.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/cycling-against-car-culture.html ]See point 3 - a blog worth reading[/url]

Good article Ti pin man

we can dream
[img] [/img]

It seems to me that what is needed is a powerful pro-cycling organisation that will not sit on its hands and bluster rather than get stuck in.

One that will scream from the rooftops, take on the media, challenge the status quo, lobby and one that represents all aspects of cycling.

Where are ours when this happens - no where to be seen.

The RHA may not be everyone's cup of tea but they do get their across and defend their corner very well indeed.

kimbers - Member

what is the difference between sentencing for careless over dangerous?

Community order - 3yrs custody
vs
2-14yrs custody

how many must die before society finally accepts it isnt right to kill cyclists.

Death by careless driving should be bye bye license, forever. Minimum.

"[i]Are careless driving and dangerous driving distinguished by intent? or is it a judgement based on action, circumstance etc? [/i]"

The difference is essentially just the extent to which the standard of driving falls below that expected. (Google for it you'll pull up the relevant Act fairly easily.) It's statutorily defined in extremely vague terms. The CPS have guidelines for what constitutes "dangerous" but if you try to correlate those with the charges that they actually bring (not to mention the cases where they choose not to prosecute at all) you'll be scratching a hole in your head trying to understand why they don't seem to bother with those guidelines in reality.

As to this case, the most interesting thing from my point of view (other than it basically says that eating a sandwich is probably ok, and that not seeing someone for 6 or more seconds is probably not such a big deal) is the mention of the lack of pedal reflectors. If that turns out to be a mitigating factor then it has implications for all of us. It is of course the law, but the law here is out of step with the pedal market - it's almost as anachronistic as (IIRC) being able to kill a Welshman with an arrow in Shrewsbury.

"[i]Of course society accepts it's wrong[/i]"

I think the question is not whether society accepts it's right or wrong, it's whether society accepts that it is avoidable and that people who have at least a hundred times the kinetic energy of another road user (along with the ability to safely absorb kinetic energy of at least a similar order of magnitude difference) really should bear the brunt of responsibility in deploying that kinetic energy in a manner that ensures others' safety - even if those others make a simple human mistake.

[i]the cylist had no lights, what time of day was it? [/i]

9:20pm, late May

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/yourtown/oxford/9728816.Crash_kills_firefighter/

So marginal on light, possibly, as the sun had already set.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=1233&month=5&year=2012&obj=sun&afl=-11&day=1

But the bottom line really is he wasn't paying attention.

Death by "careless" driving... it's all a bit "Oh whoops, I've killed someone, silly me". Ah well mate, it was only someone on a bike.

I can't read these threads anymore, they are doing my head in!

If you aren't taking care whilst driving then you're being dangerous. Both the same things. What a load of bollocks.

As the saying roughly goes: "Careless" is losing your car keys; driving cars into people tends to be more "dangerous".

IIRC both Roadpeace and CTC are arguing that "careless" should be renamed "negligent". It needs the statutory definitions to be clarified at the same time for the situation to be pragmatically better, though, IMO. And also IMO I think it would be better to simply bin the careless charges and accept that it's all dangerous: a lack of due care and attention [i]is[/i] dangerous. Danger is about risk, not outcome: a land mine in a playground is not made either more or less dangerous by someone stepping on it, it is the land mine being in a playground that is dangerous. There's no reason we should use luck as a reason to go easy on people who come close to killing others through negligent driving, but that's what we do.

And why is it so hard to get the law changed? Where does the reluctance to change "careless" to "negligent" and make drivers more aware that they have to be [b]SAFE 100% of the time[/b] come from?
I just don't get it.

"[i]Where does the reluctance to change "careless" to "negligent" and make drivers more aware that they have to be SAFE 100% of the time come from?[/i]"

From the people who drive with those bad habits and see those for whom those habits have unfolded into a fatal event and think, "God, that could be me. How unlucky he was to have hit someone."

Which - let's face it - probably is, or has been, all of us.

The question is whether one sees such an event as (a) indicating that we shouldn't be too harsh on those for whom it becomes a major incident or (b) indicating that we should really be tougher with ourselves on how we approach our use of the energy we wield under our right foot.

I'm not proud to say I've had plenty of bad habits in the past, but I am proud to say that my reaction is (b).

The problem we really have is that neither the legal system nor the licensing system do enough to force people to choose (b).

At least in this one the police put the dangerous driving charge to the jury. You might not agree with the jury's decision but at least the police/CPS pursued it.

I can see how a jury would visualise it - they've probably all done things that take their attention away from the road for a couple of seconds, and they've probably all seen cyclists without lights or reflectors in the dark. Defence lawyer paints a picture and maybe glosses over or deflects issues such as whether lights/reflectors were actually needed and they see themselves in that scenario.

I think there's far too much tolerance of low level bad driving and not enough enforcement - and too much of a public perception that enforcement is about revenue generation rather than saving people's lives. Most drivers who eat a sandwich won't hit someone but only taking action against those who do reinforces the idea that they were just unlucky rather than shifting it round so that the people who didn't hit someone were lucky that their lack of attention didn't lead to worse consequences.

I think there's far too much tolerance of low level bad driving and not enough enforcement

This.
However, enforcement requires resources and resources cost money.

I'm sure that I have bad habits but I hope that they are not anything like the things I regularly see on the roads. Perhaps cameras on roundabouts and complicated junctions would be a start, then offer a retraining course (a proper one) with a pass/fail at the end for those adjudged dangerous.

It's still way to easy to get a license and keep it.

kimbers - Member

well careless rather than dangerous driving
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-23626666
whats the difference in sentencing

the cylist had no lights, what time of day was it?

Untrue, the cyclist did have lights, but they were not on when he was found in the ditch:

The trial continues. But police vehicle examiner Phil Balderstone said the bike’s light had probably been on at the time of the crash but was faulty because it had been damaged. He could not be sure if the damage was caused before or after the crash.

What's unfortunately 'needed' to bring about any kind of change (IMHO) is the death of someone very high profile, and a resultant media circus that brings the whole sorry excuse for justice into the light.

Re: phone hacking. People were bothered, but the revelations of Millie Dowler's hacked mobile suddenly made the public sit up and think. Before that, it was abstract.

If you read the article on Holland, this is just what it took- a high-profile politician's child being killed, and a resulting campaign to change things.

I'm not nominating anyone, but someone like Leo Blair getting crushed while negotiating a traffic island would do it. I'm not being flippant, this is just the way minds work.

FWIW, this verdict's covered here, too:

http://beyondthekerb.wordpress.com/2013/08/09/what-the-law-told-us-this-week-no-1/

Rogerthecat - agreed on the resources thing, I accidentally edited that sentence out before posting... It just irks me that bad driving is only seen as an issue if you kill someone. Not if you injure someone and certainly not if it's just bad driving without any consequences.

Just looked it up. The incident originally referred to occurred in May at 9.20pm. Definitely a lights on time - it is certainly a factor that should be taken into account.

Causing death by dangerous cycling isn't a let off - upto 5 years in prison is unlikely to be a picnic
In the park and a likely 12 month minimum ban on top. However you look at it his life although not ended is certainly ruined for the foreseeable future.

Different reports state 9.05pm and 9.20pm. The light is described as both "twilight" and "hazy" though I've seen no specific mention of reduced visibility. Whether the victim's rear light was functioning is unknown, so it actually can't be taken into account in this case.

Causing death by dangerous cycling isn't a let off - upto 5 years in prison is unlikely to be a picnic
In the park and a likely 12 month minimum ban on top. However you look at it his life although not ended is certainly ruined for the foreseeable future.

yeah but hes been done for careless driving whats the minimum for that?

shortcut - Member

Just looked it up. The incident originally referred to occurred in May at 9.20pm. Definitely a lights on time - it is certainly a factor that should be taken into account.

see my earlier post:

the cyclist did have lights, but they were not on when he was found in the ditch:

The trial continues. But police vehicle examiner Phil Balderstone [b]said the bike’s light had probably been on at the time of the crash but was faulty because it had been damaged.[/b] He could not be sure if the damage was caused before or after the crash.

http://www.roadjustice.org.uk/case-study/joe-wilkins-39-killed-cycling-oxfordshire-29-year-old-driver-arrested-24512

"[i]careless driving whats the minimum for that?[/i]"

The easiest way to answer that question is to wait for the judge to issue a sentence, and usually you're roughly there.

What's unfortunately 'needed' to bring about any kind of change (IMHO) is the death of someone very high profile, and a resultant media circus that brings the whole sorry excuse for justice into the light.