Safe Speed Forums

Everyone needs to be hammered for this!

People are 100% responsible for their own actions and I will be damned if I am going to get prosecuted for some moron walking out in front of my car, drunk or otherwise.

No, it's my understanding that they would like to see the new charge used instead of current charges of careless driving where death or serious injury results.

Careless driving doesn't have the option of a prison sentence, but the suggestion is that the new offence would have.

So someone could possibly be banged up simply for making a mistake.

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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

Yeah. I'm really worried about the daft thinking behind these proposals.

Drivers won't ever think "I have to pay proper attention so I won't get banged up". So extra penalties in the lower and middle range of responsibility won't improve crash statistics.

However if they kill through recklessness then I'm perfectly happy for harsh sentences to apply. But they do already.

The bummer is that the folk on the transport select committee don't have the first clue about road safety. How the hell did that happen?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I can to some extent understand the thinking behind this idea. Currently, there is a very large gulf between "causing death by dangerous driving", which carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, and "careless driving", which carries a maximum sentence of a £2,500 fine, 9 penalty points and discretionary disqualification.

There are some cases where someone has obviously been driving in a fairly irresponsible manner, but for whatever reason they authorities have not been able to make a CDBDD charge stick, which gives the impression of something of a miscarriage of justice.

I would say there are three grades of seriousness in such cases:

(i) where the driver's behaviour has been blatantly reckless and dangerous,
(ii) where the driver has behaved in a way that he should have known was wrong and risky, but it is of a more minor nature and/or an isolated one-off, and
(iii) where the driver has simply made a mistake or committed an error of judgment

Perhaps a case can be made for the possibility of more severe sentences (perhaps similar to those for drink-driving) for offences in category (ii).

However, I would expect the result would be that a number of cases where CDBDD is currently used would end up in the intermediate category - for example the guy who was convicted of this offence after he supposedly took his eyes off the road for a couple of seconds to try to find a packet of mints. Also (dare I say it) Gary Hart.

The worry of course would be, as I have said earlier, that a more serious charge would simply be used for people in category (iii) where it would be simply retribution and there would be no deterrent effect. You can't deter people from making mistakes.

A couple of years ago there was an interesting discussion on uk.transport about a case where a cyclist had died in a collision with a car that had been overtaking them at what was generally felt to be an unsuitable location. It was a moot point whether the driver had passed too close or whether the cyclist had been startled and veered into the car's path. The driver was convicted of careless driving, given six penalty points but not disqualified. Several people thought that in such cases as a minimum there should be a period of disqualification.

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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

Remember the Austrian coach crash in the summer? Minibus driver whose driving caused the coach driver to lose control at the bend was charged with "causing death by negligent driving" as he clipped the coach on returning to lane as he had misjudged the gap and time during the overtake of a long vehicle.

Negligent - French use this same word for "careless" - and only have the one charge which covers "dangerous/careless" in any case. German speaking countries, (per Mad Doc's wife) have "negligent" charge and "dangerous" charge.


Riggers - suspect that this is part of a backdoor EU attempt to globalise.

Unforfortunately - we Brits are naff at languages - and our language is a bit richer in synonyms. To us "careless" implies "acting with insufficient attention/heedless/unconscious action - which is negligent"

"Negligent" to us Brits implies "habitually lacking attention and care"


Basically though - burden of proof will remain the same. May find it even more difficult to convict as well as our idea of "negligent" differs from foreign one,.... A really good lawyer can have a lot of "fun" with this in my opinion....

Aye - you have no idea how difficult it is is to get a "dangerous drive" charge to actually stick - CPS go for lesser to secure a conviction and judges/mags ar bound by sentence guidelines....

As stated - burden of proof in manslaughter charge or even this proposed negligent" charge will have to be greater to secure conviction with harsher penalty.

I agree that cases of sheer recklessness and blatant disregard for the law, and safety of others - such as the ones suffered by mahali and the Sawyer family should be banged up for longer periods than legislation currently allows to show how much society disapproves of such behaviour. Problem is proving beyond reasonable doubt .... getting the evidence, the witness statements..etc.

This (horrible, ignorant) new report by the transport select committee:

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/p ... 05/105.pdf

... makes some very good points about the stepped gap between careless driving and causing death by dangerous driving. (starts on page 17)

However, maybe there really is a gap. After all, it's not just one continuous scale is it? Carelessness isn't a lower form of recklessness.

I suggest that high penalties should apply when recklessness exists, and lower penalties for all other offences. I'm unsure about what we do with behaviours that are "slightly reckless" - or even what a slightly reckless behaviour might be.

The test I'd be inclined to apply of recklessness would be something like: "deliberate behaviour, likely to cause a crash, carried out without regard for the consequences". By this test, normal motorists are never reckless.

The hingepin is probably the word "likely" and I'd be looking at probabilities of maybe 2% upwards. Let's put that in the context of running a red light. As the level of crossing traffic varies, so the chance of a crash actually taking place varies.

At far lower likelihoods simply getting into a car and driving isn't "likely" to cause a crash therefore it isn't reckless (despite the fact that it's deliberate and it might cause a crash.)

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

There seems to be little difficulty in gaoling people for dangerous driving when all they seem to have been guilty of is speeding:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2052385.stm

One of your own, too...

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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