[Closed] Ryans Law Petiton , Read and sign / or not.

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Signed. It's a start, I guess. A lot more needs to be changed, thats fer sher

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On a side note, don't name your kid Ryan. There are a lot of laws referred to as Ryan's Law.

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I agree with the sentiment but that will never work. You need to prove that the death was caused by dangerous driving and that can't be done without corroboration. Best you can hope for is a change in the sentencing guidelines for the laws you could be prosecuted for.

I came across it a few months ago and totally agree.

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I’d have thought that this may already be covered by gross negligence manslaughter (no idea if there’s a precedent); if so then I would suspect that the CPS either lack the resources to make that charge stick or the imagination to even apply it.

Signed. Lost my bro to DD.

That's interesting Bez.

I think it would be good to have a legal responsibility to stop and at the very least call for help.

Is there not a couple of European countries with this in place already? I'd be interested to know precedents and practicalities.

Signed here too.

Signed. Though I know it will do **** all good.

When I was seventeen my mate was killed when a guy speeding lost control, worst thing I'll ever witness, that and seeing his dad breakdown and the devastating effect on his family still haunts me to this day. I escaped death by a matter of inches.
Absolutely pitiful sentences being handed out.
Leaving someone to die by the side of the road should come with a life sentence.

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Signed, but is it not already law (in layman’s terms) that you have to report any accident involving anything the size of a dog or larger?

So failing to stop and failing to report it should be punishable?

Having said that, having had a white van run me off the road, called in by myself and separately by a witness, the driver was let off in court...
I wonder how much the justice system will actually change...

Failing to stop at the scene of a collision involving an injury is already an offence (for motor vehicle drivers anyway). As such you would think it should be a strong basis for establishing a duty of care as is required for gross negligence manslaughter:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/gross-negligence-manslaughter

The bar for proving that offence is understandably high, but in a case where a driver breaches a legal duty to stop at the scene, that bar seems eminently reachable.

Yup, here we are:

“a "hit and run" driver might be guilty of manslaughter in certain circumstances. For instance, where a driver fails to stop or to report a collision where he or she knows or ought reasonably to have known that there is a risk of death if no medical assistance is provided to the person who has been hit, it could be argued that the deliberate failure to stop at the scene or report the incident may amount to manslaughter by omission.”

Source: https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/road-traffic-charging

By the way, the he maximum sentence for gross negligence manslaughter is greater than that for causing death by dangerous driving. So the original petition doesn’t seem entirely wise: asking for one offence to be extended to simply overlap an existing one is highly unlikely to succeed, and even if it did then the result would be a lower maximum sentence. The question is really about whether the existing law of GNM has too high a bar to be provable in cases such as these, but without knowing the specifics of this case and why the CPS presumably didn’t pursue that charge it’s impossible to tackle that one: is there a real problem here, or was the evidence such that even a “lesser” offence would still be unprovable? There is the old saying, though: “hard cases make bad laws”.

It's already a legal requirement to report the accident.
Including a compulsion to give first aid or be charged with dangerous driving doesn't make any sense to me.
Even if you don't give first aid you can still be prosecuted for failing to help in some form.

The law already covers this so what would be the need for these extras?.
I understand folks frustration , but that's a fault of the courts and sentencing guidelines, not the actual law. We have enough over complicated and unnecessary laws already.

The max for this offence is 14yrs as it is and remember, it's not murder, it's a motoring offence. Bad driving doesn't mean you intend to kill someone.

To be honest, if someone killed one of mine I'd not want to rely on the court to make sure they were punished anyway, I imagine most parents would feel the same.

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The question is really about whether the existing law of GNM has too high a bar to be provable in cases such as these,

I wonder if there is a compounding cultural bias among our legal system.

For me there is also an element here of pre-meditation and compounding factors.
A driver of an untaxed, uninsured vehicle or no licences has chosen to do so. Particularly where there is more than one of these responsibilities missing. Add these as aggravating factors to dangerous driving, speeding, leaving the scene or similar offences, and the sentence should be much stronger.

IANALE

Bad driving doesn’t mean you intend to kill someone.

No, but it may well mean you don't care about whether you kill someone. Surely in return for the privilege of being allowed to use a potentially lethal tool society is entitled to expect care and attention? And punish you if it's not forthcoming?

I wonder if there is a compounding cultural bias among our legal system.

Much has been written by many people arguing that this bias is not only very real but institutionalised.

I won’t be signing. I have a general dislike of politics by petition and this is a good example of it. Headline sounds right. Facts in the description are not quite a true representation and then the demand is poorly thought through. I think Bez has covered it well (as usual).

It seems to suffer from this problem (and normally I think of MOAB as one of our more informed posters):

A driver of an untaxed, uninsured vehicle or no licences has chosen to do so. Particularly where there is more than one of these responsibilities missing. Add these as aggravating factors to dangerous driving, speeding, leaving the scene or similar offences, and the sentence should be much stronger.

These are already (a) separate offences that can be prosecuted (b) modified versions of the offence (eg Death by dangerous driving whilst uninsured) and (c) aggravating factors for being unlicensed / uninsured. Already in the English sentencing guidelines.

I’ve posted here many times before - if you want to make the roads safer focus the efforts on people who drive badly but get lucky and don’t kill anyone. If you want petitions - campaign for greater policing, cps and court resources not yet another law which only gets dusted off after someone is dead.

If you want to campaign for a change to sentencing guidelines or minimum sentences for failing to stop - don’t link it to the death - literally thousands of people get a few hundred pound fine and points for failing to stop, it’s just they got lucky and nobody died.

No, but it may well mean you don’t care about whether you kill someone.

Don't believe that either. You may well be ignorant of the consequences but I doubt every bad driver doesn't care if they kill someone.

Indeed; all of that (poly’s post). A more considered petition would have been to request a modification to the definition of dangerous driving rather than the specific offence of causing death by it. Then anyone leaving the scene could still be charged with dangerous driving regardless of casualty outcome and the “causing death” offence would have fallen into place by default. It still would have been flawed, but much less so.

I completely understand the feeling that “something must be done”—god knows the legal system has failed countless people who have been killed on the road—but the proposed change is not a good something IMO.

I can sympathise with this petition and appreciate the sentiment. But I’m not sure it’s the right way forward. Bez and others have highlighted that there are existing laws that cover this. Adding more legislation causes a law soup and is likely to weaken already poorly applied opportunities to prosecute and sentence at an appropriate level.

Better would be a push for presumed liability and the application of existing laws and sentences.

Signed. Lost my bro to DD.

My brother was killed by someone speeding.

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