Aidy – Member
And yet the driver who killed a cyclist by dooring him in a bus lane got off with no charges?

Have to love how the justice system is different when there’s a motorist as the victim. NO if you are going to quote cases bother to understand what the charge was. In the car door case it was for manslaughter. This was for death by careless driving. A charge which was created precisely because proving manslaughter on the roads is very difficult.

I drove for a living in and around Aberdeenshire for a good few years. If I had a delivery for a shop on Union Street, the only option (for many shops) was to pull over on the double yellows / on a bus stop, stick the hazards on, and run into the shop. Sometimes you were lucky and got out before you were ticketed, sometimes not. All tickets are the liability of the driver.

for most traffic offences causing or permitting is an offence too. if you can prove the company made you park dangerously and kill someone then the company can also be prosecuted.

I have no problem with the charge, too many people park dangerously. Yes there is reason to think the driversare at fault too but bear in mind we have no parking on many nsl roads for a reason and you should notpark anywhere it would cause people to have to violate a solid white line.

If the lorry owner realised it was dangerous he was daft to park there. And leaving his engine running was illegal too.

I drove for a living in and around Aberdeenshire for a good few years. If I had a delivery for a shop on Union Street, the only option (for many shops) was to pull over on the double yellows / on a bus stop, stick the hazards on, and run into the shop.

Last time I was in Union St the traffic was doing about 20mph not 60mph and there wasn’t any bends at the crests of a hill.

Just a thought…what would the outcome have been if he had stopped because he had broken down at the same place?

From the article…

The police claimed his driving had fallen below the standard one would expect of a competent driver in that he created an unnecessary hazard.

The same points were argued at length before the Court of Appeal, but three judges agreed that Jenkins had caused an unnecessary hazard which was bordering on the dangerous. They also rejected his defence team’s argument that he was no longer ‘driving’.

I think the case against a driver who had broken down in that position would be much weaker. Breaking down in that position is not a choice in the same way that parking there was. You might say that it’s still the driver’s fault he broke down, if a lack of maintenance was the cause, but I think that’s getting a bit weak, and in any case the location is unlikely to have been a deliberate choice.

It would also be argued that breaking down does not constitute driving in the same way as parking was held to be.

He added: “This case is interesting because it confirms that once a vehicle is parked up where it causes an obvious risk, responsibility for that vehicle nevertheless continues with the driver who cannot claim that he has now ceased driving.”

Even though the offence of death by careless driving could be argued against, for the reasons above, this bit suggests that the driver still has a responsibility to deal with the hazard his vehicle is causing, so if the driver didn’t take reasonable actions to safeguard others he might still be found culpable of something.

NO if you are going to quote cases bother to understand what the charge was. In the car door case it was for manslaughter. This was for death by careless driving. A charge which was created precisely because proving manslaughter on the roads is very difficult.

I did, thanks.

The point was not that the two cases were similar, or that the law was applied unfairly, it was to illustrate the inadequacies of the justice system with regards to vulnerable road users.

In the car door case it was for manslaughter.

They prosecuted the wrong man, the bus driver should have been in the dock for being unable to stop. CPS failing to get the law applied correctly again.

Should you never be allowed to pass another vehicle then incase they swerve into your lane, making you liable?

Perhaps he’d have got a lesser sentence if a cyclist had been killed going round the parked van?