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news
Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Driver who killed Carol Boardman handed 30-week jail sentence and 18-month driving ban
Liam Rosney, the pick-up driver who hit and killed Carol Boardman while distracted by his phone in July 2016, has been sentenced to 30 weeks in prison for causing her death by careless driving. Boardman was the mother of former pro rider turned cycling campaigner Chris Boardman, who this week said he would like to see longer driving bans rather than “big custodial sentences” for such crimes.
Rosney, 33, faced a charge of causing death by dangerous driving but later admitted the lesser charge of causing death by careless driving.
He and his wife Victoria were cleared of attempting to pervert the course of justice last year, after it was alleged they had deleted records from their mobile phones in the wake of Boardman’s death.
Rosney and his wife exchanged several phone calls in the run-up to the crash – the last one terminated an estimated four seconds before the collision.
The BBC reports how Matthew Curtis, prosecuting, said that the phone was being used on speaker mode, not requiring the defendant to handle the phone as he was talking, “but plainly to accept or reject or end calls.”
Curtis added that Rosney, “did not see Mrs Boardman and first realised he may have collided with her when his vehicle was physically riding over Mrs Boardman's body.”
Oliver Jarvis, mitigating, said Rosney did not "want to make any excuses for his behaviour".
He told the court: "He says that he has destroyed the lives of two families and therefore nothing I say will seek to undermine that guilty plea."
He added that Rosney had a clean licence before the crash and was driving at an appropriate speed. He said if Boardman had not fallen from her bike, Rosney would not have hit her.
He said: "Mrs Boardman entered the bend over the give way lines when the defendant had priority and was already on the roundabout."
Sentencing, Judge Rhys Rowlands said: “This was an accident which could have easily been prevented and your contribution to that accident is significant in as much as you were distracted, the distraction being as a result of you using your mobile phone before the actual collision.”
Speaking before Rosney was sentenced, Chris Boardman gave his thoughts on such crimes, telling the Press Association that, “the devastation behind carelessness is just unbelievable.”
He said: "We don't treat crime committed in cars as serious crime, so somebody can be careless and crush somebody else to death and it's classed as careless."
Boardman insisted he does not want to see “big custodial sentences” for people convicted of driving offences.
“I would like to see more driving bans,” he said. “Driving is a privilege, so I don’t want those people who commit crime – and that’s what this is – become a burden on society. I’d just like them not to be able to do that to anybody else ever again.”
He added: “What I would like to see – and I think what we would all like to see – is sentencing to reflect the crime. ‘I’m going to take away your right to drive. For good. You lost that privilege. You chose to be careless and I’m taking it away.’”
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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24 comments
Strange no clamour from our MPs to introduce new laws to keep killer drivers off our roads unlike the Alliston case.
Guess they're busy with another insurmountable problem
I can see where Chris is coming from with regard to the burden on the public purse of custodial sentences. My problem is, I don't believe driving bans are either a deterant to poor driving or driving whilst banned. How many weeks ago was it that a case was on here of someone causing an "accident" while banned and part of his sentence was an increase in the ban! What is the (pardon the swearing) fucking point? He was already banned, do you really think he won't be driving again? He probably drove home from court. If nothing else it's time that driving while license is suspended results in automatic custodial sentence, or at least a swingeing restriction of movement by ankle tag. No appeals, automatic. And it's time the "severe hardship" card was knocked on the head too. At 3 points every time you're nicked for speeding it takes 4 times to hit he point of suspension. If you are so uncaring or thick that you can't accept 3 warnings as a hint to address your driving style, why the fuck should society care that you've lost your "job" through no one's fault but your own?
As for the comments about bans in professions, I see where you're coming from but I'm going to say you're missing the point. If you're a surgeon who lost his license, no hospital will employ you, the same for a FLT operator who loses his license. Unfortunately there is no one to stop any banned driver walking out of their front door and hoping in the car, can etc and driving off. I would love to know how many people driving today have either; never taken a test and held a license or have a suspended license (including folk on 12 or more points but who have been "let off" a ban). I'm sure the figures, if they could be found out would be terrifying. There has been a lot of news stories this week about knife crime in youngsters. Rightly so, it terrible, but in terms of actual numbers it pails when compared to the carnage we accept day in and day out, on our roads.
It has long since gone where folk understood that driving is a privilege not a human rights issue.
Probably even more than you think. At university, I met a bloke who lived in Swansea who was able to source legit driving licences, registered with the DVLA, for a few hundred quid.
If you are paying a few hundred pounds why not just take a few lessons and then pay to do the test and drive legit (assuming you pass).
If 'Black Boxes' are available to reduce insurance costs for young drivers, then surely someone can come up with something that is needed to start a car, that requires a valid license?
In our works vehicles we have to use a personal fob to stop an annoying buzzer going off before we drive off. It tracks our driving, and any misdemeanours, which reduces my employers insurance bill.
I agree with you, giving someone a ban is pretty ineffective seeing the number of banned drivers getting caught with no insurance, no mot and drug/drink driving
totally agree, there may be circumstances where it should be considered but it ought to be the absolute rarity exception, not the get of ban free card its used as. Like in this case where there was a celebrity chef recently whose latest speeding points had pushed him in to banning territory, his lawyer (who wasnt mr loophole for a change it seemed) claimed exceptional hardship...even though he admitted his client could easily afford to pay for a chauffeur,, not even just pay for a taxi or use the bus like most of us would use instead, which would have allowed him to drive his son to football and visit his restaurants, but because his client was going to the states to film a new tv series that involved driving, a driving ban would destroy the chance of that going ahead, and so the magistrate agreed it was exceptional hardship and just fined him 500quid instead.
If that's the kind of society we live in, one where inconvenience to a "celebrity" is worth more than someone's life, I'm not sure I want to live here anymore.
The 18 month driving ban is also pretty worthless. No-one checks these things, unless he gets himself into another collision within that time.
Mark my words he’ll be back on the road straight after his few weeks in jail.
and doesnt even sound like the discretionary retest was applied
I dont understand sentences like this, I read the same sentencing guidelines that are published that the judge will have used, and I should be able to come to the same sentences right? and yet Im always poles apart on it.
Chris Boardman speaks a lot of sense: if Jamie Oliver can get school dinners changed at a governmental level - or at least raise public awareness so that some changes happened - I've no doubt Chris Boardman can do the same for public awareness of these inconsistent legal outcomes if nothing else.
It seems to me he likes his science and his facts to back up his arguments - pretty rare in the UK at the moment! - and I would love to see / support campaigning for proper (longer/permanent) driving bans as he suggests: it makes total sense on all fronts -to me economic, ehtical, environmental, public safety....
Not rocket sicence either is it - if you can't be trusted to drive safely, you lose the right to drive.
In his shoes, at this point, I would not be able to make such a measured / thoughful statement about the situation, even in the public eye.
Chapeau!
Shame they were acquitted of perverting the course of justice. He would probably have got a longer sentence for that.
I wonder what reason they gave for deleting their call histories, and was it remotely credible?
It’s all a bit fishy. The blokes Dad is a senior police officer who intervened in the investigation. There was a remote possibility that the call logs could have been deleted if the phone storage was full. It seems this is what lead to the judge instructing the jury to acquit them.
I wonder if the actions of the father would have faced more scrutiny if the case was progressed. It could be that a 'deal' was done.
At least being the son of a senior policeman is not going to be fun in prison.
So a driver so distracted by his phone totally fails to see a cyclist and only notices them when he's physically driving over them, deletes phones records, and gets 30 weeks.
A cyclist (admittedly on an illegal bike, although tests at the time show even with 2 good disc brakes he'd not have been able to stop) hits a pedestrian who failed to look, (yes I know he was a twat afterwards) and gets 18 months in the nick.
Sentences need to be commensurate and comparable. Why does a cyclist in an extremely rare case of one killing a pedestrian get a far heavier sentence that the hundreds of drivers who kill people ?
Same last week, pratt of a cyclist "clips" a horse causing a minor bruise, and gets the same find as a driver that failed to look and caused "life changing" injuries to a cyclist as she drove over him, while another who loses control in a bend (excessive speed in the wet) and wipes out 2 horses and riders coming the other way, one requiring 100+ stitches, and the driver was NOT prosecuted at all.
Not only did he get less that half the time in jail that Charlie Alliston got, it also took twice as long for the case to come to court...
The justice system in the UK when it comes to deaths and injuries caused while driving a car is an utter disgrace.
Sympathies to the Boardman family and huge credit to Chris for speaking so calmly and eloquently on what is obviously an incredibly painful topic for him and his whole family.
It's annoying the prosecution seems to settle for little wins rather than doing them for what they really did.
Likewise, sympathy to Chris and his family; the trial must bring it all back.
At least this guy had the guts to plead guilty, so he gets some respect, but Chris is right; the road laws need reforming now, but we have a government which has stalled on this for five years.
Despite this case, Mick Mason and a hundred others, all the government have done is bring in new laws about causing death by dangerous cycling.
I'm tempted to call for demonstrations a la yellow vest protest in France, after all, most of us have one.
To a lesser charge. He denied the dangerous driving one.
It would have been difficult to get away with denying careless driving given he'd been using a handheld mobile a few seconds before the collision.
I suspect offering a guilty plea to a lesser charge might have been in his own best interests, not an act of contrition.
Probably not a good idea here seeing as you may be mistaken for a Neon Nazi. Far right idiots have adopted gillets jaunes here.
I have the agenda for my MP's surgeries. So, from next week, I shall be making frequent visits to see my MP about these issues.
Hope others do the same.
Good idea, let's all go and see our MPs and demand that they start the review of road laws they promised five years ago.
The one thing that people who have lost a loved one in an incident like this is some assurance that other people won't have to go through the same pain as them.
Letting a killer driver back on the road is a continual insult and source of distress to victim's families that can lead to PTSD and other mental health issues.
if a gamekeeper threatens someone with a shotgun (even if they don't fire it, or even claim later it was unloaded) they lose thier privelege to use a shotgun for life (and as a consquence possibly their job and home).
Yet actually kill with a car and you lose the privelege for just 18months !!
Sympathies to the Boardman family.
As always, Chris Boardman is absolutely correct. Given the quality of driving of the killer driver, and the number of calls made, it is a disgrace that Rosney only gets his license revoked for 18 months.
If a surgeon kills someone through gross negligence, they would almost certaintly by lawnever be allowed to practice surgery again
If a forklift truck driver, working in a warehouse, kills someone through gross negligence, they are very unlikely to ever get another job driving a forklift in a warehouse
If a driver on the open road kills someone through gross negligence, they are unlikely to get convicted, and if they do, they are generally free to do it again within a few months.