Safe Speed Forums

I suppose the car driver and the Fire Service will be blamed for this but not the stinking, evil hoaxer?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... x-999.html

_________________
Anyone who tells you that nothing is impossible has never bathed in a saucer of water.

An awful story. Sadly there will excuses made for this rather sick minded yob.


I fear he may be now perhaps help.. and will face a life of petty crime and the occupational hazard of a jail term.

I do not know how we should deal with this type. I will say that society demands he is punished.. but I admit I would like to see his sentence incorporate some education to try to help him build a life.

Now, admittedly some of these younger 12-15 year old "yobs" end up in foster care after serving sentences in "young offenders" and we take on a long term foster of this type till age 16 - but keep them till 18 or through higher education. I can honestly say that they are all "difficult and do fight our relatively "laissez-faire easy-minded to negotiation .. but with a certain twist of lemon juice and cider vinegars disciipline" By this I mean .. we set intial ground rules.. which we think common sense .. and are certainly more rigid over "in our house by certain time" at first than we are with our own.. I have to say our own brood are pretty fair minded and understand why I demand exact punctuality from them when we get a new "yob" to train

Most on board know the story of Wayne who socked me one on the jaw .. whilst Wildy argued with jec and might have "scratched a bit less playfully than norma because I locked her in the study whilst me and my own two eldest sons worked at controlling a kid who had consumed every bottle of booze in the cocktail cabinet as I had left the key in the lock in one very stupid senior moment of complete senilityl"

As all know.. I told all that we had ayoungster with a history of under-age drinking.. and TWOCCING cars .. driving unlicenced etc. He could not actually hold his drink.. especially my best malt whisky at the time

But with strong-minded handling and making him earn rewards such as our funding his driving lessons.. and I am delighted to report that he has made a RoSPA GOLD and now a fully qualified Corgi plumber .. and achieved CREDIT PASSES in every exam on the way to this


So.. Whilst I do post up some perhaps hard sounding comments on some of these chav kids.. I will admit that if someone gives them a fair chance .. fostering is extremely rewarding - gives you a warm and hopeful feeling when you see these kids begin to make that "recovery"


but you have to be very VERY firm with this type of foster kid...The other side of it is the respite short spell to help out by looking after the kids whilst the parent recovers from an illness. Just as rewarding too.


Sorry.. I am hi-jacking the thread by saying why we should all consider fostering these erring kids ..

I am trying to say that if we do.. we may help these kids steer away from a life behind bars and also help make ourselves safer too in the bargain.

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

I do. A bullet through the head. I'm sick of the time, money and effort wasted on these vermin. I know that some very patient and caring people such as Mad Moggie and Wildy can help to turn some of them around, but I would rather my taxes weren't spent on these wasters so that I could give my own children a bit more.

This from the Daily Wail's comments page on that particular story.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... crash.html

Cheese-eating surrender monkey wrote:

He didn't cause the death - the driver of the fire engine did. I'm not making excuses for the lad, but he mad a hoax call, as lots of teenagers do.
- AA, Herts, 2/7/2008 17:54

YOU PILLOCK! MAKING HOAX 999 CALLS IS ILLEGAL! DOING SO PUTS LIVES IN DANGER! A 10-year old child is an accident statistic because of some "bored" youth! If you feel sorry for him then perhaps you'd like to share a cell with him (If he is jailed!) THE YOUTH IS RESPONSIBLE, NOT THE FIRE ENGINE DRIVER! IF THE YOUTH HADN'T MADE THE CALL, THEN THE FIRE SERVICE WOULDN'T HAVE HAD TO RESPOND. NO FIRE ENGINE- NO ACCIDENT! Don't try and make PC statements regarding action & consequence. It's a no-brainer. AND SO ARE YOU!

May I ask some of you to leave a few comments on that page, totally contradicting that braindead fool?

_________________
Anyone who tells you that nothing is impossible has never bathed in a saucer of water.

Our own paramedics are often called to hoax calls.



I do not understand this. I do not understand what "frisson of thrill" they get from this.

I will admit that the fosters we get from "young offenders" got their thrills from nicking cars.. breaking into the homes of others.. drinking to excess.. and drugging themselves.. and indulging in very petty crimes.

None have done such stupendously stupid though. I work with these kids .. as does my wife and our own fruits of our marriage.

I think we succeed with a lot of patience and TLC underpinned by a strong minded disciplined ethic.

But so far.. we have not dealt with the hoaxer from hell. I do not know how we would deal with this one. If I am faced with one such.. I guess I will have to work out how to set the kid back on rails with our supporting walking sticks

_________________
If you want to get to heaven - you have to raise a little hell!

Smilies are contagious
They are just like the flu
We use our smilies on YOU today
Now Good Causes are smiling too!

KEEP SMILING
It makes folk wonder just what you REALLY got up to last night!

Smily to penny.. penny to pound
safespeed prospers-smiles all round! !
But the real message? SMILE.. GO ON ! DO IT! and the world will smile with you!
Enjoy life! You only have the one bite at it.

Hmm! I see where you are coming from but....

[ ]

As one of the other commenters stated, who would be to "blame" if the fire had been genuine??

Can culpability/responsibility (I consider the two to be diferent things often confused! ) for a vehicle accident shift between diferent parties depending on whether or not there is actually a fire in a separate part of town some miles away?

Does the "Duty of Care" that emergancy services vehicle drivers have towards the wider public not apply if they are responding to a hoax??

[ / ]

The issue of "emergency vehicles" and their involvement in accidents (irrespective of the hoax calls issue) is a complex one.

As a socioty we (well, most of us anyway ) accept driving behavior from emergency vehicles that would without question be regarded as dangerous or even wreckless were any "ordinary" driver to behave in a similar fashion.

(The fact that I, say, had fitted my own "Blues and Twos" and even passed an advanced high speed driving course would not prevent me from being banned for, well, ever!)

We accept the hazard prexented by this sort of driving because we feel that the benefits of emergency service vehicles arriving as quickly as possible outweigh the small additional risk to the rest of us by the furious driving that is a part and parcel of their doing so

Obviously responding to a hoax call there is no "Upside" so any accidents are seen as a total waste rather than as an unfortunate "Shit happens" incident.

It is certainly true that the hoaxer was responsible for creating a situation that wasted a lot of time and could have diverted resourses away from a real incident (for which I think he could be held responsible without any serious logical issues)

He could even be held moraly responsible (on the grounds that without the Hoax call the situation that led to the accident would not have taken place)


But can he be held legaly or civily responsible for the accident??

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

In my own country .. which hold similar law to most of EU .. the idiot who hoax would be held as responsible.

_________________
Nicht ganz im Lot!
Ich setze mich immer wieder in die Nesseln! Der Mad Doc ist mein Mann! Und ich benutzte seinen PC!

UND OUR SMILEYS? Smile ... und the the world smiles with you.
Smiley guy seen when you read
Fine me for Safe Speed
(& other good causes..)

Greatest love & Greatest Achievements Require Greatest Risk
But if you lose the driving plan - don't lose the COAST lesson.
Me?
Je ne regrette rien!

I have to say, "similar law to most of EU(SSR) " doesnt particularly reassure me.

In most EU countries you can be imprisoned (for quite a long time) for questioning the officially sanctioned, government approved, version of history!

But back to topic. of course there is a part of me that wants to find him responsible for the accident but, logically, I cannot see it!

As I said, it sort of implies that being on a hoax call absolves the actual driver of his/her responsibility to the public, and that just doesnt make sense.

(Of course Govenrments can make whatever laws they like, especially totalitarian ones, but that doesnt nececarrily mean that the laws are logically consistant. Personally however, I think they should strive to be)

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

No hoax call - no accident

From the paper -

Other view - had these appliances been needed somewhere else and life lost because of hoax - wonder if the person supporting the hoaxer would be so keen then (especially if it was family)

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Sounds good, but it is a dangerous argument.

Consider the following scenario.

Fred empties a smouldering ashtray into a litter bin. A few moments late the bin ignites. Fred is unable to extinguish the blaze and calls the fire brigade.

On the way to the (genuine) fire the engine runs over a pedestrian.

Now, Fred was "Careless" in that he hadnt made sure the ashtray was safe before emptiying it.

Do we blame Fred for the death of the pedestrian??

Do we proscecute him for it??

If so, on what charge??

It is tempting to bring in "New Laws" to deal with these sorts of high profile case, but it is dangerous! there is an old adage "Hard cases make bad law" this means that we should "Not" bring in new laws as the result of rare but tragic or extream cases. Time and time again we see the consequences of this sort of thing and we need to be REALLY REALLY carefull about alowing the state to introduce broardly worded "Catch all" laws on the back of high profile tradgidies because we dont really know what they will end up using them for (You know the sort of thing, Using anti-terrorisim laws to remove Labour party confrence hecklers You should try reading the most recent piece of anti-terror legislation. The definition of "Terrorisim" and "terrorim related activites" are positivly scary! and could be used to imprison almost anybody if they decided that they wanted to "Get" you !)

On a more general note there has been an unhealthy trend over the last few decades of introducing legislateion that seeks to use "criminal" law to punish people for the "Consequences" of their actions (No matter how remote) rather than their intent and actions. A good example of this is the "Causing death by..." laws which represent an outrageous abuse of the traditional sytem of criminal law.

(This is what I mean by the confusion of the distinction between "Culpability" and "responsibility")

I could go on-and on. and on

But back to topic.

He is certainly guilty of perpetrating a Hoax.

Is there a crime of "Wasting fire service time" as with the Police??

Manslaughter? (I would argue possibly too remote, IE too many other factors involved the biggest being the competance of the engine driver. The same goes for the "Alternative casualties" scenario posted by Botach. You would have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that, but for the hoax, the other party would have been saved. The "Fred" scenario earlier in this post also applies. Do you charge Fred under similar circumstances??)

"Wreckless endangerment" (Of Life) Does such a charge exist??

If not, Should it??

Or is it a bit too "Catch all" (You are nicked sir, smoking in a public place, that will be 12 years!)

Hmm

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

I think if Fred accidentally starts a fire through his own stupidity or carelessness and calls the fire brigade then that would still be a genuine emergency. Fred may die of smoke inhalation or he's been trapped by the ferocity of the flames. All the fire service are likely to say, "He may have survived if he'd had a smoke alarm and an escape plan." You DO NOT blame fred for the death of a pedestrian.

I agree with Oscar and Botach. That 17-year old witless "bored" youth is the cause. Making hoax 999 calls is illegal. It puts lives in danger if there is a genuine emergency.

_________________
Anyone who tells you that nothing is impossible has never bathed in a saucer of water.

Please dont misunderstand me! I have little sympathy for the little scroat, Especially since it said in the original article...



So there is no way whatsoever that he could claim that he didnt realise that hoaxing could have these sort of consequences

But I want the law to be logically consistant and just so I like to think about these things a bit.

Back to the questions

1) What do you charge him with? (other than making hoax calls)

2) How do you make it stick? (any half decent defence lawer should be able to establish the distinction between being responsible for creating a situation where a crash "Might" happen and being responsible for causing a crash!)

3) How do you all this so that does not increce the risk to the rest of us of falling foul of capricious "catch all" laws!

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

The collsion occurred at the traffic lights. Now no one knows if the fire engine's driver used his "discretion" to jump the lights on the red signal. We are only supposed to do so if it is SAFE for us to do so and we do not expect folk to put themselves into danger or adverse inconvenience to make a way for us. We are supposed to use the lights and the woo-woos to let others know of presence and "sense of urgency."

However, some fire brigades are adopting a "no siren/woo-woo" policy and one, per the Mad Cats, recently claimed in the Manchester/Bolton press that this "reduced road accidents and collisions"


I think the Mad Doc has asked the fire brigade in question for more information as to this claim..

Now the lad can only realistically be charged with making the nuisance hoax calls. His part in the tragedy will be taken into account in the inquest and other investigations relating to this accident. Had he not made the hoax call - then by the chance fate of sliding doors "what if/if only" - these vehicles would not have met with tragic consequence at those traffic lights and under some foreign laws, as I understand from the foreign mob, he would be held liable for "malicious intent" which contributed to this incident.


However, despite the deliberate malice of the hoaxer - the nub of the investigation into this crash would be the same as if the shout was genuine - foccusing on the sequence at those traffic lights, the level of care taken by the emergency driver when venturing through on a "red", speed of approach if on a "green to amber" and most fire engines travel at a max of 40 mph to these emergncies as they are large vehicles. Part of the investigation will look at the road position of the victim and also investigate how and why she did not see the lights or hear a siren - assuming Sheffield use -or the driver used - them

_________________
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 don't see how the kid can be held responsible. Yeah, he's a stupid little turd who deserves a slap, but legally, he initiated a sequence of events in which others made fatal errors. We expect the emergency services to progress to a scene as fast as possible while being relatively safe, the reasons for the journey are irrelevant.

If you insist on talking on the phone to a driver who loses concentration and causes a fatal accident, are you culpable? Morally, perhaps. Legally, no. It's the drivers duty to progress in a safe manner.

_________________
Fear is a weapon of mass distraction

But that's the problem. Folk panic when they hear the siren. We train our teams to be aware of this - that folk will not react as one might expect here

But this kid knew the risks involved - right at the outset when the call operator was initially suspicious of him. Thus he reasonably forsesaw what could happen .. but still persisted in the hoax.

That 's what makes this kid differerent in terms of liability.. or would be judged so under the foreign system

_________________
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.