Safe Speed Forums

Reported in the paper today is a story about a man given a 5 year jail sentence for aiding and abetting dangerous driving resulting in people being killed.

I would not wish to second guess the judge who clearly has all the facts at his fingertips (ref. Fisherman ) but this is the report:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... 13mph.html

A terrible case but it seems that the man had been drinking, realised that he was incapable of driving and asked the woman to drive. Pretty responsible. The woman said and still says that she had not had much to drink and presumably the man considered her to be telling the truth.

I am a bit concerned that someone not in control of the vehicle can be charged with this offence. If you are in a car with a driver who does not appear drunk what are you supposed to do?

I await the aiding and abetting charge to be placed on the surviving girl from the "police chase" death crash. They had all been out drinking, she was not driving the car and people are dead.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I saw this and it raised an eyebrow - however it needs to be considered that:

(a) it was his car, and he had given her permission to drive

(b) he had been with her all day and had been aware she had been drinking. As the report says: "She and Nichols, the firm's owner who employs 63 workers plus 100 agency staff, later told police they drank around a bottle and a half of wine between them. Nichols decided to let Butres drive them back because he had drunk 'the majority', Mr Michael Fowler, prosecuting, said."

My suspicion would be that, as often happens in such cases, they had in fact consumed rather more than they admitted to. Half a bottle of wine would be unlikely to give even a smallish woman a BAC of "one and a half times the drink-drive limit" some hours after drinking.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Its very rare for a passenger to be charged in this sort of case. As PeterE has already said, the passenger owned the car and gave permission for her to drive in spite of knowing that she been drinking to excess.

Its also worth noting that he was her boss. I don't know what came out at the trial but there may have been an element of control or direction, with the boss telling the employee to drive. If so, that would make things much worse for him. Another factor is whether or not he encouraged her to drive so quickly or if he tried to get her to slow down. The first would make things worse for him, the second would help him.

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I am not a lawyer and can't give legal advice. I do have experience of the day to day working of courts and use that knowledge to help where possible. I do not represent any official body and post as an individual.

another interesting factor does the "black box " record the trip on a jag or is this the airbag data recorder.

If they were realy doing 113mph on a non motorway road in the wet, the owner did not stop this madness.

I would think his wealth and thier fiscal ability to get a chaufer to return from this jolly spiffing day out also adds insult to this case.

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

All Ford engineered cars have ECUs which store the last X minutes of data for "diagnostic" purposes. This translates as Ford getting off any liability if someone says "the throttle stuck open" etc. in an accident.

It also might have a secondary purpose ...

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

A sustained period of wheel spin (which one might expect on a very wet road after a loss of controll) could make the log read a far higher speed than that which the car was actually traveling .

The damage to the car looks nowhere near enough for a 100 MPH crash (or even a 50 MPH one for that matter!)

Something about this story really doesnt smell right!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

According to the article they didn't hit anything, except for the kids.

Mary Butres, 47, lost control of the car after she hit standing water and careered into Mark Compton, 20, and his 19-year-old girlfriend Jodie Brown, who were walking away from their car after it had broken down.

I wonder if the council have cured the standing water?
Or like the A338 near Bournemouth do they just keep picking up the peices.

The root causes of this accident :
drink driving
standing water causing the victims car to brake down
driving to fast for the conditions

If any of these root causes had not occured then they probobly wouldnt have been killed

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

It's true that some (maybe most?) current cars tend to store a rolling "x" seconds of data in their ECU. This provides very useful data on crashworthiness but obviously also has a uaseful "ass-covering " function!

As for the wheelspin theory, the data recorded is likely to include the output from all 4 ABS sensors, so it would be pretty obvious whether there was any significant discrepancy between the speed of rotation of the driven and none-driven wheels. In any case, I imagine a car like that would have traction control.

Unfortunately, these are the root causes of many a serious car crash


Not paying sufficient attention to road conditions and other road users


I would also wonder if the driver was insured to drive the owner's car? It may be that he took out a policy which entitled employees to drive the car if the vehicle was a "company car" perhaps though.

And yes - I understand from the Mad Cats' Jags that these cars do have traction control.

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Take with a chuckle or a grain of salt
Drive without COAST and it's all your own fault!

A SMILE is a curve that sets everything straight (P Diller).

A Smiley Per post
FINES USfor our COAST!

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon - but driving with a smile and a COAST calm mind.

I thought that too.

I posed a simular question on here some time ago that related to a senior person in a company I worked for trying to pressurise me into driving a lorry. Having only just passed my test and never driven anything bigger than a mini metro, I declined on the basis that I'd probably kill someone. The character concerned took it personally, and made things difficult for me.

The opinion of most is that the driver is responsible, regardless of pressure applied. He may have commited a different kind of offence but that would be a different trial, surely?

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Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

All engine management systems store the previous X seconds of rolling data, they need that info to work out what to do next with regards fuel mixture, throttle position, etc.

Recovering the data after an accident to work out what was going on just before the crash just happens to be an unintended "feature".

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What makes you think I'm drunk officer, have I got a fat bird with me?