Suspended sentence and 12 month ban for driver who killed Suffolk cyclist

A is an accident, B is a deliberate act.

What about C, negligence?

Bez wrote:

"No intent is irrelevant."

Of course it's relevant.

Example A: Someone gets up from their chair in the lounge to go to the downstairs toilet and, whilst getting up, knocks over a candle onto the floor without noticing. By the time they return, the lounge and stairs are ablaze but they escape safely. Four people are trapped in the rooms upstairs and die.

Example B: Someone gets up from their chair in the lounge, leaves by the front door, lights a candle and drops it through the window onto the lounge floor before walking off. Four people are trapped in the rooms upstairs and die.

If intent is irrelevant, you must sentence those people equally.

Personally, from the point-of-view of morality if not existing law, I don't think intent is necessarily very important at all in every case. For example, I'm one who doesn't think "I didn't mean to cause offense" is necessarily a valid defence when someone has said something racist, say.

Being casually reckless can be no better than doing something deliberately, as far as I'm concerned. There comes a point where you damn well _should_ know better.

The difficulty occurs when that casual recklessness is characteristic of a large group and is socially regarded as normal. As, for example, drunk-driving once was.

In those cases, members of that group will think the distinction over intent is important, while those NOT part of that group will see it as besides the point, because the group as a whole have collectively _decided_ not to be more careful.
(That's what often happens with the "didn't mean to cause offense" thing with regard to many groups).

I believe drivers, as a group, have normalised not being careful with the lives of others. But I don't see that non-drivers have to accept that as an excuse.

Your example could be one of those cases, if the candle-tipper was a member of a group who were regularly prone to be careless with the lives of members of the group who formed the victims.

Bez wrote:

CTC arguing for "a much longer driving ban and possibly a re-test"?

Baws.

You get found guilty of killing someone, you lose your licence and you don't get it back.

Why demand anything less? It's only a driving licence, it's not like you're demanding they have their legs taken away.

If someone's proven they can't drive without causing someone's death, they shouldn't be driving. If we could determine whether this was the case at the point of the driving test, we'd never give them a licence in the first place. So once we do find that it is the case, why do we just hand it back to then?

I am posting above that she shouldn't get a licence back until this "personality disorder" she used as mitigation as to why she can't be held responsible is dealt with. That maybe never in her case.

and in general I think that a year is way too low for killing by careless or dangerous driving. I am thinking 5 - 10. Plus some other testing and training and with big hurdles.

There are some cases where a lifetime ban and maybe life imprisonment may be appropriate. And dangerous driving is one thing and careless driving another. But say a 21 year old kills someone while careless driving, I don't think it appropriate to have him/her banned for life. When they are 30 and after this they may be the safest most careful and considerate driver on the road ever.

I actually think it should be a long ban 5+ years (careless) or 10+ years (dangerous) but I also think that after that, the hurdles to getting a licence back need to be quite high. eg a permanent imposition of the terms that new drivers face of a 6 point maximum for 2 years after passing. I'd have that as a permanent imposition for drivers who have been convicted of killing either by careless or dangeous driving. So basically speed twice in 4 years and that's it. Or anything attracting 6 points. 1 instance of speeding a lot or due care. And that wo9uld be a one time deal.

Losing your licence once is bad. Twice and it's permanent.

Tom Amos wrote:

PS an acquaintance was banned from driving for a year for speeding. His lowest recent insurance quote was 8 grand. He cannot afford to drive now. Hopefully that will be the case with the woman above.

Which may well be the case, and I wonder if, being truly devastated, she would want to drive again? I don't believe a gaol sentence would really achieve anything, there simply is no intent.

However the courts have to man up and show that substandard driving is not acceptable, and that means life bans. No ifs, no buts, not 12 points and claiming hardship. If you break the rules, you are banned, no ifs no buts. If you want people to cycle and walk more you have to make people feel it is safe to do so. One way is to ensure that all road users look out for the more vulnerable users, and one way to do that is to properly punish transgressions.

Quote:

Lumley-Holmes would have been able to see Mr Evans for 200m. If she was travelling at 30mph she would have had 11 seconds to see him.

Is it just my poor maths skills again or does that not add up? At 30mph (48km/h) it should take 15 seconds to cross the 200m distance - and during that time the cyclist will have moved forward another, say, 60 metres, so really we are talking 20 seconds or so.

I wonder how much sleep she had had (or if my maths is wrong how much I have had).

cqexbesd wrote:

Quote:

Lumley-Holmes would have been able to see Mr Evans for 200m. If she was travelling at 30mph she would have had 11 seconds to see him.

Is it just my poor maths skills again or does that not add up? At 30mph (48km/h) it should take 15 seconds to cross the 200m distance - and during that time the cyclist will have moved forward another, say, 60 metres, so really we are talking 20 seconds or so.

I wonder how much sleep she had had (or if my maths is wrong how much I have had).

Yeah, I make it 15 seconds. But it also surely depends on the speed of the victim, and hence the _relative_ speed, as she hit him from behind. Was he stationary at the time?