Safe Speed Forums

Yes, entirely agreed.

I'm aware of the legal definitions, but surely an isolated mistake or error of judgment should be considered as careless, not dangerous. I would reserve dangerous for incidents where there is a sustained pattern of irresponsible driving or an instance of obvious recklessness.


When there is no mens rea and no evidence of knowing recklessness it's hard to see what point a custodial sentence serves. It certainly won't deter anyone else.

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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

Wasn't she of previous good characture? If so, the people with convictions up to their eyeballs must be laughing their heads off. They do everything bar kill some one and get fines they don't pay and bans they ignore. She makes one, admittedly bloody stupid mistake and gets 16 months. It is justice for the family, I guess, but it seems to me that justice is not metered out that evenly.

Sound like they were if they had to swerve to take evasive action when a car predictably pulls out of a stationary queue into the lane to their right (which happens A LOT).

Still, you're right, everybody in L2 might've been going 20 (don't think so though).

I would phrase it slightly differently.

1. People who fail to maintain the minimum required standards, and are proved to have caused risk or actual harm to others, should be punished even if they had no intention to cause harm.

2. I have never said that those who think they won't be caught deliberately crash into others. I have said that the amount of risk people are prepared to take is related, in part at least, to how likely they think it is that they will be caught.

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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.

It is important to realise that the people who had access to all the evidence, and not just the bits that were reported, didn't attempt to put any blame on the other drivers. That would include the defence lawyer who had the biggest interest in shifting as much blame as he/she could.

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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.

There are two main areas to consider for sentencing. Whether there was a sustained period of bad driving. If there had been the sentence would be longer. In this case it doesn't appear to have been a momentary lapse as she is reported to have driven slowly across two lanes and into a third, all without looking to see if it was safe to do so. On the other hand, it wasn't miles of driving the wrong way up a motorway either.

The level of bad driving is more important. For example, jumping a red light when you can see there is nothing else coming is one thing. Jumping a red light where it isn't possible to see crossing traffic is rather more serious.


She is serving a custodial sentence because she did something that fell far below the standard expected of her, and as a result, somebody died. What may, or may not, have been in her mind is less important than her actions. As I have pointed out before, if they had been able to prove she deliberately drove her car into the path of the motorcycle knowing there would be a collision, the correct charge would probably have been murder.

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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.

She was stopped, in the inside lane of the southbound A12, waiting to go across the fast lane to the crossover.
The traffic was overtaking her, the motorcyle was part of the overtaking traffic.
She didn't need to stop, there was a slip road there.
There was also a slip road to her nearside.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

That is only the case with people who knowingly undertake risky activities such as driving when drunk, extreme speeding and overtaking in the face of oncoming traffic. It does not apply to people who simply make mistakes or errors of judgment.

And, in general, people are only caught and punished when things go wrong, which they don't expect to happen.

As I've said before, if you punish people for making mistakes, it doesn't make others less likely to make mistakes.

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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

Ah, I didn't consider there was no other stationary traffic in L1, just her.

Still...

Unfortunately press reports are not the best of things to go on, but it appears to me that this woman was not up to the standard of driving required full stop.
However, from the few cases I have seen, I don't really care much for this Dangerous Driving law which Fisherman defined for us as:


Her crime in that case would appear to be one of "Not being a careful and competent driver".

This is the sort of driving error which might be shown up by re-testing elderly drivers more frequently, and ALL drivers less so.
Old age is a terrible thing - the problems accelerate too quickly for the normal checks of doctors etc. to identify and catch.
In a recent case in Cumbria the coroner found a driver who died had been told by his doctor to have his eyes tested - but failed to do so, and went on to pull out in front of a car 18 months later!

Remember she could have passed her test any time after 1955!! Could she be reasonably expected to keep up to date with modern driving conditions? Of course SOME drivers do, and are still competent at 71. MY father is 81 and more than just competent. My Father-in-law is also 81, and has not been safe in a car for the last 3 - 4 years, but keeps passing his annual test despite our tipping them off!
Reason? NOBODY actually sits in the car with him - they rely on reports from his doctor!

Using Fisherman's definition, many more drivers should be charged with dangerous driving - but are not, simply because they have not had an accident yet.
I don't anticipate anyone ever driving while thinking "I'm dangerous, so I think I'll pull over in case I get sent to jail", so this sort of incident is NEVER going to decrease despite all the prison sentences.

A tired driver who falls asleep at the wheel loses ALL control over the vehicle, while a driver who has decided to drive home despite having had too much to drink is merely impaired - and still retains SOME control over the vehicle. Do we have differing degrees of dangerous? No just a blunt "one size fits all" jail term!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

On the other hand, if people are not punished for mistakes, even stupid ones which cause a death, the roads would be even more dangerous than they are now as there would be little pressure on any driver to behave sensibly. Also, if the law only punished deliberate actions there would be a blanket defence of "I thought it was safe to overtake on a blind bend because I did it every day last week and there wasn't anything coming the other way". Or " The speedo goes up to 140 so it must be safe to drive at that speed".

The current law on careless and dangerous driving is vague. Deliberately so, in order to allow police and courts to take all the individual circumstances of each case into account. Unfortunately most people, in particular the ones who are most vocal about driving matters, don't have access to all the information and make their pronouncements based on limited, and possibly inaccurate, information from the media. The person best placed to know if the sentence was appropriate - apart from the judge who passed it - is the defence lawyer. I wait with interest to see if he appeals.

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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.

I would support annual retesting for ALL drivers. The press know that headlines about elderly drivers will sell papers. Anybody who has spent any time in court will be aware that all age groups are liable to do silly things while driving.


I agree, but would point out that many cases of dangerous driving are successfully prosecuted without an RTC having occurred.

I am sure that the possibility of conviction never occurs to a lot of people who just don't know how bad their driving is. It is a restraining factor for many drivers however. I couldn't count the number of times I have heard people say that its unfair the police were in an unmarked car as they would have driven differently if it had been a marked one. They are clearly modifying their driving when they think they will be caught.


Not true. The vast majority of dangerous drivers don't go to jail. Before any body asks I don't have any official figures, that comment is based on personal experience of a lot of motoring courts. The guideline for dangerous driving is a community penalty with custody for the more serious occasions.
Even the offence of causing death by careless driving has a guideline of community penalty for "momentary inattention". Death by dangerous driving does have a guideline of custody which, given that the driving has to fit the definition of dangerous driving AND kill someone, seems reasonable.

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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.

Neither of which comes within the definition of a mistake.

In my view no driver should be imprisoned unless it can be shown they were doing something that they should have known was dangerous or irresponsible. "Failing to see" does not qualify.


Which would cause a vast increase in cost and bureaucracy for little if any benefit, particularly given the large number of accidents caused by people who aren't licenced to drive anyway.

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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

As this applies to everything in life except for occurrences within your own realm of experience, we should all immediately refrain from any comments on any subject just in case we don't have all the facts. This should, of course, apply primarily to politicians who make decisions based on information given to them by biased advisors.

Actually, I don't agree with you. It is not necessary to have all possible information to make a general comment on a subject. Most of the vocal comments on here about driving matters are just that, general points on good driving practice. Hypothetical discussion based on limited information harms nobody. This board is not a court, it is a think tank.

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

If she can't move from lane 1 to lane 2 without nailing a bike, would she have crossed both lanes of the opposite carriageway without nailing someone else? It is quite likely that had she have made the central reservation, that the first of the cars she encountered in lane 2 would be doing 90 mph, illegal yes, but quite likely, not behind a truck doing 56 max.

1. But what purpose would this serve? Especially given that our jails are full, as I'm sure the Home Office keep telling you. I still think the way to deal with someone who does their best, but their best isn't good enough, is to ban them from driving and make them take their test again. I just can't see what purpose punishing honest mistakes serves - apart from revenge.

2. I absolutely don't agree that people's accident avoidance risk management is informed by fear of punishment at all.

I would say people avoid crashing in to other people because (in roughly decreasing order of importance)

A. It might hurt them
B. It might hurt others
C. It may cost a lot to fix
D. It may lose them their no claims bonus
E. It will deprive them of their car for some time
F. They may not complete their journey
G. They may get punished.

If I knocked over and killed a child that ran in to the road, I would be remorseful for the rest of my life, whether or not I was in any way culpable. Remorse at spending a period in jail would be vanishingly insignificant by comparison, and thus fear of jail has a vanishing insignificance on my daily efforts not to run over children.

What about somebody doing 40ish down a narrow residential street whilst looking at a text message on their mobile phone?

I saw this occuring today, obviously if anybody had stepped out in the road they would've been pretty much dead, there did happen to be kids in the street at the time.

Criminal lack of responsibility IMO.

Criminally off-topic IMO.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

I take on-board a lot of what Fisherman is saying, but I have to agree with Ernest on this one, this seems to be a systemic failure in driving standards.

Yes, periodic retesting would be absolutely brilliant, and would bring driving into line with other professions which require a skilled degree of machine control, but if someone is found to be lacking in these skills the answer is not to lock them up, regardless of the outcome of their lack of skills, but to remove their licence to operate either permanently, or until such time as the requisite skills can be re-demonstrated. It is a systemic failing that this lethal lack of skills was not detected and acted upon before life was lost.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

Not really, just challenging "I would say people avoid crashing in to other people because". To my mind travelling at great speed down a narrow street whilst not really paying attention to the space around you is not trying to avoid crashing into somebody, in the slightest.

Also, I've asked people that state "there shouldn't be children in the road" what would happen if they struck one, and invariably get a response such as "well they shouldn't be in the road". Rarely do I see reposonses such as that made by Johnnytheboy who seems to actually consider what it would be like to strike another human being with a car.