[Closed] Van driver kills 18 year old cyclist while texting. Verdict?

This shit's getting outrageous.

What??

**** Me!

Jury is made up of drivers.

You can't help but think there has to be a certain amount of "there but for the grace of god go I".

It's a shocking travesty of a case, but it's depressingly predictable, and apparently, the CPS didn't play a blinder.

Isn't there a way to petition these ridiculously weak decisions? Or is that just when an inappropriate sentence, rather than an acquittal, has been given?

The headline says he was cleared of killing the boy, so it's quite a coincidence a teenager just dying spontaneously in front of this poor chap's van.

Jury is made up of drivers.

You can't help but think there has to be a certain amount "there but for the grace of god go I".

I think that's exactly it, and it's concerning that the jury members seem to think they could easily do something similar, and that it wouldn't be their fault either.

Too much of it going on.

http://singletrackworld.com/columns/2015/03/bez-erasure/

Not 100% clear cut though, presumably CPS thought enough evidence to go for death by dangerous driving & I assume won't get done for any lesser offence now either 🙁 feelings go out to the lads family.

Mr Sinden said he replaced the items and was near dog groomers when he saw a cyclist on the side of the road.

“I realised it was a cyclist on the pavement on my left hand side. He started to come off the pavement and I started to react. I started to brake and steer around the cyclist.

Absolute bloody joke!
I can't imagine what the family are going through after that disgraceful verdict on top of the grief of the loss of their son

I'd be going mental in court sod contempt and all that, just disgusting

Usually there's more to these stories when you click and read the details but this just seems to be a disaster.

Hope the driver, defence team and CPS all sleep well after this.

Poor lad's family must be in bits.

There really is too much of this going around, it's utterly depressing. I wonder if it'd be better having no jury for driving cases? It seems you really can get away with murder due to the above "by God that could have been me" style thinking as mentioned above.

Travesty.
Similar with the hairdresser that killed an elderly couple whilst on the phone.. you guessed it... not guilty.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/not-guilty-verdict-trial-hairdresser-8639156

http://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/driver-accused-of-texting-knew-33566/

Strange why the young lad was riding on the footway as the picture shows him on a bike with tri bars,so he was obviously an experienced cyclist and sadly the un convicted driver knew the young lad after drinking at the mums pub.

A quote from a friend who knows the area well: "The footpath he alleges Dan rode off has no dropped section between its start and where the 'accident' occurred and is only a foot or so wide, covered with undergrowth. No cyclist would ride on it."

Totally horrible.

"he swerved violently and a laptop and some lights fell into his lap"?
Where would a laptop have been to have fallen into his lap?

****ing disgusting.

Lying turd.

Van driver kills 18 year old cyclist while texting.

Sinden claimed that as his phone had only 1% of its battery left he threw it on the passenger seat.
He said that an oncoming driver then “flashed” his lights to alert him to a pedestrian in the road and he swerved around the man.

“It was a quite violent swerve and I slowed down from 50 mph to 40 mph and my laptop and some lights fell into my lap.”
“I realised it was a cyclist on the pavement on my left hand side. He started to come off the pavement and I started to react. I started to brake and steer around the cyclist" - Philip Sinden
Sinden said he replaced the items and was near a dog grooming parlour when he saw something ahead of him.

“I realised it was a cyclist on the pavement on my left hand side. He started to come off the pavement and I started to react. I started to brake and steer around the cyclist.

“It was all very quick but it seemed to me he had moved out slightly from the lane he should have been on.”

He told the jury that Daniel had turned around and looked behind him “just before it (the van) struck the bike”.

“He just came out more than I expected. I spiked my brakes," he added.

[u]If[/u] what the driver says is true it seems like he wasn't using his phone at the point of the collision at all.

Very sad situation in any case.

Lying turd.

Obviously.

Its frustrating, scary and outrageous

One of those where so many drivers hate cyclists and they have probably all texted or held a phone at some time

Its at times like this that I never ever wanted to be judged by my peers as they are often incompetent , biased **** wits

he had moved out slightly from the lane he should have been on.”

Every excuse in the book he was on the kerb, he moved out ...I hope they brought up the HC picture to show how wide he should have been and WHY

The excuses always smell of BS because they almost always are

What an absolute crock of shit. These defendants all sound the same, like something out of an eastenders script.
Can they bring a private prosecution? I'd chip in a few quid for that.

“It was all very quick but it seemed to me he had moved out slightly from the lane he should have been on.”

Prosecution should have torn that shit apart.

How the **** can that (even on the driver's account) not lesd to a conviction. Words fail me.

Except sweary ones.

I'm not sure it's fair to "blame" the jury without hearing all the evidence in court or yourself. It is the crowd's job to establish beyond reasonable doubt that he committed the offence. Whilst the defence seems incredulous to us, if they didn't have sufficient actual evidence then unsatisfactory though it may be better that some guilty people go free than one innocent one is convicted.

poly, I think the point is that you have to convince a jury that "merely" texting and not looking where you're going is a wrong thing to do

While you may not blame them for failing to see that, I bloody do

I think, from reading projects link, it's that they needed (and failed) to convince the jury that he was texting when he hit the lad, not that texting while driving is wrong.

Of course, but there's no way you can ever prove that somebody was texting while driving, right at the point of a collision - unless you got really lucky with cctv

That, and the "oooh, no, it was on handsfree your honour" that we had a couple of weeks ago has pretty much entrenched the permanently open season status of cyclist-killing

You're right, unfortunately it is very hard to prove that he was texting at the exact time of the collision.

Sickening and sad. I smell more than a few rats. Was nearly taken down three times myself this week alone, twice on the same intersection/crossroad. I can well imagine how it would play out: 'I didn't see him'. Oh that's ok then, the (non-cycling) jury wish to go home, cyclists shouldn't be on the roads anyway if you ask me...'

He was charged with death by careless/dangerous driving, not death by texting while driving.

The texting may have been careless/dangerous. But that's not the only thing that can fall under the careless/dangerous labels. The problem is that ploughing into someone isn't a bad thing in the eyes of the law. You have to be shown to be doing something ludicrously dangerous to get a conviction, as if the fact you killed someone in broad daylight on a straight road wasn't enough to raise suspicions.

I'm so glad I sold my road bike 3 years ago when people get away with murder like this.

Just a shame that we have to link trails together with tarmac

If the only evidence the prosecution brought was that he was texting and there was no clear evidence of when this was in relation to the accident then they left it open for the defendefence to argue there was no link. Afterall had it been 30 minutes before whilst illegal nobody would claim it caused the accident, what about 5 minutes, or 2 minutes (that's 1-2 miles away depending on speed). If the only evidence of carelessness was using a phone your case is falling apart. If you say, well a careful driver would still have seen a cyclist in good time, the case can fail when there is no evidence that the cyclist didn't change lanes or suddenly move off a pavement. Criminal prosecutions don't work on the basis of seems rather unlikely. Sometimes the crown even have the evidence but unaware of the defence strategy haven't called the right witness or asked the right question because the aim is to get through the business (efficiently for the Taxpayer) rather than go for a conviction at any cost.

Surely in this day and age the public can appeal against a decision like this? I know there are good reasons why they can't. And I do agree with most of them. But it's beyond belief how many people get away with this. The line has to be drawn somewhere. The kid's family must be distraught.

Utter madness.

If you want to kill someone do it in a car, seems to be almost acceptable. 😐

So, to paraphrase then, poly:

All a driver has to do is deny everything, imply some blame attributed to the dead cyclist and do as their lawyer tells them and they'll be fine unless they're incredibly unlucky with the level of evidence available ?

For people asking what you can do about this sort of stuff, the CTC run the Road Justice campaign:
http://www.roadjustice.org.uk/
and work with the Cyclists' Defence Fund
http://www.cyclistsdefencefund.org.uk/
who fight legal cases for cyclists. For example, they are currently raising money to fund a private prosecution in the case of Michael Mason, who was run down in London. The police failed to report the case to the CPS, apparently because he was not wearing a helmet and hi-viz (although he had lights and was cycling on a well lit street):

http://road.cc/content/news/146173-incomprehensibly-callous-met-slammed-michael-mason%E2%80%99s-family-plan-private

http://www.cyclistsdefencefund.org.uk/police-u-turn-prosecution-michael-mason-case

If the only evidence the prosecution brought was that he was texting and there was no clear evidence of when this was in relation to the accident then they left it open for the defendefence to argue there was no link. Afterall had it been 30 minutes before whilst illegal nobody would claim it caused the accident, what about 5 minutes, or 2 minutes (that's 1-2 miles away depending on speed)

I read (can't find the link now, will look for it) that the last text was sent less than 60 seconds before the driver called 999 to report the crash. That sounds relevant to me.

Edit: http://www.kentonline.co.uk/deal/news/van-driver-cleared-of-causing-33772/

See harry smith's comment.

My thoughts on this case:

https://beyondthekerb.wordpress.com/2015/03/21/somethings-not-quite-right-here/

Poly,what killed the cyclist, if not being driven into by someone behind the wheel of a van?

I'd love to know if all members of the jury were drivers, I'm guessing they probably were. But how many were cyclists?

This is like a race trial in 1950s America with an all white jury.

Thank you Bez for both articles.

Road riding= death from behind/your life is in everyones hands. Trail riding =your life is in your hands.

Bez - with the caveat that I've only skim read it and am happy to take your word for it on the sums, I think what you've written there is excellent. How the prosecutor failed to pick this guy apart in the box I cannot fathom.

This kind of news makes me want to stop my two lads riding their bikes on the road.
Until we have some law that states the larger vehicle in an RTC is at fault as the starting point and proceed from there drivers will have no reason to think about how they are driving.

Yesterday I was heading back into the Hope Valley over the Ringinglow Road (for those that know the area) and at the point after the head of the Burbage valley where the road crests a blind brow before passing Higger Tor a car overtook 3-4 cyclists on the brow of the hill. I had to slam on the brakes and pull off the road to avoid him. As I set off a second car tried the same manouver but swerved back behind the group. Just two small examples of the 'right to pass irrespective' mindset of many drivers. No wonder the van driver was acquitted, road cyclists are just a nuisance and one reason I avoid riding on roads.

Please go back to the top of p2 and help fund the private prosecution. If the money is raised and the case is proved it may help keep us all safe as police and drivers start to think. £5 is great, £10 better, but whatever you can give please.

Poly,what killed the cyclist, if not being driven into by someone behind the wheel of a van?

Bez gives a very good analysis of how you might expect the Crown to go about doing that. My point is, it is not clear from the reports that the Crown were as robust as Bez's approach, and therefore blaming the Jury is unfair. The Jury can't (no matter how much they might want to) make assumptions to fill in the blanks of the crown case - they can only assess the evidence they've heard. There can be a number of reasons for gaps in a crown case. The unfortunate reality is that the Crown prosecutor has probably never visited the scene, has possibly never even driven on that road. (S)he is usually relying on police reports and witnesses to build a picture of the geography. (S)he may not have been able to prove to sufficient standard that the timings on the phone and the 999 system were synchronised. Some parts of the evidence may not have been admissible (its not that uncommon for something not to have been signed, or presented to the defence at the right time - and if its significance is underestimated the case proceeds without fixing this simply by not using that piece of evidence). If (s)he realises half way through the defence case that nobody has measured (or brought out in evidence) the distance between the junction, the dog groomer and the accidents site, and that a map would have helped the Jury to appreciate these - its too late (s)he has already closed the crown case. (S)he can try to discuss it in cross examining the defence witness(es) but (s)he can't introduce new evidence. The speed "calculations" Bez makes, whilst incredibly simple can't be done by the prosecutor themself in court. (S)he needs to call an "expert" witness - typically a police traffic officer. If the crown case was focussed on the mobile phone use and they thought it was convincing they may well choose not to "waste" either court time or the officers time following up on the speed suggestion. At the end of the day the prosecutor is a human being who will make mistakes. It is inevitable that prosecutors vary in standard and experience - its quite likely that the person allocating this case saw it as "straight forward" and "just road traffic" and so allocated it to a less experienced prosecutor. The defence can (within its means) take a somewhat more rigorous approach to selecting its team - afterall it is the only case (we assume) that the defendant cares about winning; the crown on the other hand had several thousand other trials all running at the same time.

The crown have to show that at the time of the offence the standard of driving was careless (or dangerous) - that is, it fell below the standard of a careful and competent driver. It is of course possible that the Jury arrived at a totally inexplicable conclusion, and that is why there are 12 of them to try and avoid this. It is certainly possible that in the privacy of the jury room one or two strong willed "drivers" thinking "for the grace of god go I" managed to swing the others to agreeing. However, if the crown case had been stronger then they would likely not have achieved a majority.

I simply think it is wrong to assume the jury were biased unless you heard the entire case and the Judge's instructions to the jury. There are many other places that cases fall down long before the Jury is asked to consider its verdict.