Safe Speed Forums

A lot of the dangerous driving cases we see do not arise from deliberate bad driving so there is no intent in the sense of meaning to drive dangerously. The usual causes of the dangerous driving cases i see are bad temper and overestimation by the driver of his or her abilities.

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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.

OK, I see your point, so I'll put it another way: I think the sentence should reflect the guilty person's actions, rather than the consequences of those actions.

My interpretation is not as yours. 118c does not indicate that the type of incident which you have described (low speed rear end shunt) would result in an "almost certain" jail term as you have intimated.

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

Interesting document Fisherman thanks, p120 is relevant to this case.

It would appear that the case may have got to crown court as he was being pursued, it does not mention if the accused has to be aware of the pursuit or not. From the lower section inappropriate overtaking would be an aggravating factor. As would carrying out other tasks if PC Milton's riding was examined.

What struck me is that you can have careless and dangerous driving, however when death is involved the driving can also be inconsiderate. I think inconsiderate would describe Mr Saxby's and PC Milton's riding quite nicely, you do not get to be a 40 year old biker by riding carelessly or dangerously. A pity there is not an offence of inconsiderate driving, careless implies mistakes through incompetence, dangerous implies mistakes through aggressively or intentionally bad driving possibly combined with incompetence. Inconsiderate driving would cover driving in a manner that would be likely to lead to an collision/incident should the driver or other party make a mistake. My logic on this is that most accidents require the participants to make multiple mistakes usually at least one each, in most situations a single mistake can be compensated for, however when driving on the limit, i.e. inconsiderately, a single mistake would be highly likely to result in an incident.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Sorry, i wasn't actually disagreeing with you just trying to explore the idea a bit more.

Again I am not really disagreeing with you but there are some cases when its entirely reasonable to take consequences into account. When dealing with assault cases there is something called the thin skull rule, which means that if you punch someone and it turns out they have an abnormally thin skull and die, you get charged with manslaughter on the grounds that you intended to inflict damage and are responsible for any degree of injury you may cause. On a personal level I think the case for extending that to circumstances where carelessness has occurred but there was no intent to harm is much less clear cut.

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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.

my fault for not making myself clear. i had in mind the usual rear end shunt we see in court, traffic lights go red, lots of cars stop, one doesn't. In spite of the red light, all the brake lights and the fact that the car in front is at a standstill. In lots of those cases the defendant blames the car in front for stopping without warning. Such a case ticks all the boxes for a custodial sentence.

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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.

Technically speaking it would have got to crown court for one of two reasons. Either the magistrates declined jurisdiction as they felt their sentencing powers were insufficient or the defendant elected for crown court trial. In practical terms the fact of the pursuit would have been a factor for the sentencer to consider. Generally speaking if you know you are being chased and refuse to stop, that is an obvious serious aggravating feature of a case. If you were unaware of being pursued by a police vehicle with blues and twos going the prosecution will put that forward as an aggravating feature, although of less importance than a fail to stop. I remember one driver, on trial after a not guilty plea, who told us that he had not looked in his mirror because it would have been dangerous at 110MPH.


There is. The Road Traffic Act 1988 s3 allows for a charge of either "without due care and attention" or "without reasonable consideration for other road users".

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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 experienced some appalling driving today. I was last in a line of 4 cars doing about 40 MPH on some winding trunk road with double whites in the main, with some short stretches of overtaking possibilties but only with the right amount of acceleration. The guy in front of me was early twenties in a Seat Leon RF? He was straddling the double whites very badly on every tight corner, the middle of his car was on the doubles at one point and on another bend an oncoming car missed his rear bumper by only about 6 inches because the Leon driver was still across the double white (had the oncoming driver been on the whites it would have been a hit). He continuously straddleed the middle of the road looking for overtaking opportunities without any obvious mirror or indicator usage and when he finall overtook the second in line car he only just got back in before another car nearly hit him. At no point did he indicate or seem to use his mirrors.

These are the sort of drivers who need locking up, his driving was dangerous to the extreme but this time he was very lucky. But at no point did he exceed the speed limit.....

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Have you seen it used much?

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

Now and again. The last one I remember was for repeatedly driving through a deep puddle to splash people waiting for a bus.

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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.

This story has naturally cropped up on PH, one of the posters mentions



No mention of what offence he was banned for at that time, would something 16 years old be used to raise the punishment now?

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

I don't know what the law has to say about really serious motoring offences like death by dangerous driving as that is way above anything i deal with, but for less serious motoring offences anything that old won't make a difference. The longest lasting of the run of the mill motoring offences are the alcohol related ones. Two alcohol related motoring offences in ten years gets you a minimum 3 year ban, even for a just over the limit drink drive.

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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.

The rider who is the subject of this thread wasn't locked up solely because of the speed involved. It was because of the overall standard of driving with excessive speed being just one component. As a matter of fact the most serious sentence available for speeding is a fine. No jail, no community penalty.

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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.

No. It should depend on the chances of being caught (for the law to work, i.e. change people). For example, if there is a low risk of being caught, the punishment should be very heavy, to discourage others. Others won't try it (knowing they'll get time) even though they might well get away with it once or twice.

Does that mean, say, people should suffer severe punishment for dropping litter, as in practice they are unlikely to be caught?

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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

I have to disagree with your logic as it is presented. For the law to work i.e. change people, the sentence should be as stiff as possible regardless of the crime of the chance of being caught doing it; that's clearly unreasonable. Besides, unreasonably heavy punitive measures will only serve to drive people underground to evade any potential punishment, hence it can backfire.

Besides that’s all irrelevant: I don’t see how this biker stood any less chance of being caught than other road-using offenders.

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Views expressed are personal opinions and are not necessarily shared by the Safe Speed campaign

Shouldn't it depend on the, oh I don't know, seriousness of the crime?

No, it depends whether it involves a motorist.

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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

Yes, that's a good example. Most often, there is practically no punishment, hence we have lot's of litter. For the law to work, there must be harsh punishment.

No - such sentences would be too harsh. Chance of being caught = C; Seriousness of offence = S; Punishment = P; so "P propto S/C"

This formula prevents unreasonably heavy punishment, hence it won't backfire. The idea is to set the punishment as LOW as possible, while still setting it high enough to change people's behavior. Consider when the judge makes an example of someone. If the risk of capture is low, then the punishment must be higher than if the risk of capture is high.If you make the punishment "as stiff as possible regardless of the crime of the chance of being caught doing it" (whatever that means) you stand the risk of making an example of everyone - how can everyone be an example?



I have some sympathy - who amongst us (as a youth) has not outrun the law on an m-cycle? I once whizzed past some traffic cops hiding behind a bill board. I was late for work.... so I wound the Kawasaki up and went faster! I was half a mile away before they even got into gear!! But that was then, and this is now.