Careless driving law causes rift
Proposed law splits road safety groups
Can a new law stop careless driving?
Safe Speed
According to Safe Speed's Paul Smith the proposed legislation is inspired not by a desire for justice but for revenge.
Smith said: "My heart goes out to anyone who has lost a loved one on our roads. It's that awful loss that makes it so very important that we get our road safety policies right. We must have policies that punish the dangerous minority and educate the responsible majority. We must have policies that actually make the roads safer.
"Careless driving is a minor error. A momentary lapse of concentration, a minor error of judgement or an observation failure are all careless driving - and rightly so. Sometimes a commonplace and minor driving error can have deadly consequences. No driver can guarantee not to make a minor mistake. This new law will imprison good people on the random roll of a tragic dice."
"This new law isn't a valid attempt to improve justice or road safety. Victims groups want revenge and the government seems intent on giving it to them."
Association of British Drivers
The Association of British Drivers (ABD)agreed, saying that the law will not achieve its aim and that the government is missing an important opportunity.
ABD road safety spokesman Mark McArthur-Christie said: "While this law will give just retribution for those killed by such drivers, it will not make the roads safer. Most who drive in a careless manner simply do not believe they are going to kill somebody so will not adjust their habits. The real and serious problem of drivers not taking care will therefore remain unaddressed.
"The ABD has for many years called for the police and the judicial system to crack down on careless drivers before they kill using the perfectly adequate existing laws. Sadly, prosecutions for careless driving are not taken seriously by the court system and the police are therefore reluctant to take careless drivers to court. Prosecutions therefore remain extremely rare."
ABD chairman Brian Gregory said: "Careless road users are one of the biggest problems on the road, inattentive driving is one of the biggest killers yet the government still fail to act, instead concentrating on non dangerous numerical speed offenders. This is nothing more than a token gesture towards relatives of the victims of such drivers, but these drivers need to find themselves in court or being re-educated before they kill."
RAC Foundation
The RAC Foundation on the other hand saw a gap in the law that needs filling. The organisation said that it has lobbied since 1999 for the introduction of this offence, with an appropriate maximum penalty, in addition to the existing offence of causing death by dangerous driving.
"We believe that having an offence of causing death by careless driving on the statute books would help by allowing prosecutors to bring a charge appropriate to the level of bad driving; which recognises the death of a third party; and which carries a range of penalties appropriate to the gravity of the offence.
"The need for a specific offence of causing death by careless driving arises as a result of the disparity between the offences of careless and dangerous driving, both in term of the burden of proof and the sentencing option available to courts following conviction."
According to the body's traffic and road safety manager Kevin Delaney: "The offence of causing death by dangerous driving is extremely difficult to prove and prosecutions tend to be brought only in the most extreme cases of grossly bad or wicked driving.
"Prosecutors tend to charge with the lesser offence of ‘careless driving’, or accept a plea of guilty to ‘careless driving.’ This often leaves relatives feeling that justice has not been done following the death of a loved one.
"The RAC Foundation believes that having an offence of causing death by dangerous driving on the statute books would help bridge that gap."
Not sure that sounds quite justice but what's your view?
article said said:
"This new law isn't a valid attempt to improve justice or road safety. Victims groups want revenge and the government seems intent on giving it to them want."
Seems to be a grammar error in that quote. Might want to fix that!
I totally agree here. Death by careless driving is too far the other way. It's too easy to "prove" for the prosecution, which is ok if you were driving carelessly, but the fact they want to send you to prison for such is pretty bad. How can you prove you are innocent?
Perhaps death by careless driving should simply be that, a "name" tag, to differentiate that you had caused a death by driving carelessly, but being sent to prison for what could have been a total accident is pretty excessive.
If this law is to be used, and people are imprisoned, what is the motivation to drive sensibly. If we have a freak accident and kill someone, we are imprisoned. If we drive carelessly and kill someone, we are imprisoned, if we drive dangerously, even with intent to kill, we are imprisoned.
What is the point in driving well? We are punished simply because fate deals us a bad hand and we hit a patch of diesel or oil on the road, or someone jumps out at the last minute. It's easy to say we were careless, but it's hard for us to prove it was beyond our control to avoid it, even as the best of drivers perhaps!
Surely being proactive and putting more police on the roads would prevent a majority of these accidents happening in the first place, especially from those who actually DO drive dangerously and can't be proven to have been.
Instead, we bring in laws to punish accidental deaths by imprisonment, just to make the relatives feel better when the prosecution can't prove death by dangerous
Sick really.
Dave
This all stems from the bloke in the van on his mobile phone who hit a car head-on and killed the occupants. Whilst this is clearly a dangerous practice, we all do similar things and generally get away with them (eg tuning the radio, etc)and I'm sure he didn't intend the resulting.
It all seems to be (IMHO) another dig at the 'evil' motorist!!!
cpas said:
Whilst you have to feel for the victims' families and friends, surely a prison sentence should only be given for death by intent (the same as premeditated murder, etc).
This all stems from the bloke in the van on his mobile phone who hit a car head-on and killed the occupants. Whilst this is clearly a dangerous practice, we all do similar things and generally get away with them (eg tuning the radio, etc)and I'm sure he didn't intend the resulting.
It all seems to be (IMHO) another dig at the 'evil' motorist!!!
Er no...we don't all do 'similar things' and if YOU do then I advise you stay well away from a motor car...! What next? - "Sorry sir I was completely off my face and had absolutely no intention of mowing down all those people at the bus stop. What did they expect anyway standing so close to the edge of a road on that...what do you call that raised bit..? Oh yes, a pavement..." (!!?)
Yet another example of the vocal extremist minority pushing through laws based on relieving guilt and exacting revenge against the sensible majority who see laws like this as yet another example of the world gone mad."
"WHO IS RESPONSIBLE IF NOT GOD" is the retort of the verious religious groups
"WHO IS RESPONSIBLE IF NOT THE GOVENMENT" is the retort of the powerless, the godless through disenchantment, and the dependent "compensation culture" masses
" I AM RESPONSIBLE" is the retort of the honest, self supporting individuals who are unfortunately a dying race, may we rest in peace where ever that may be.
Racing Rod said:
If a child steps into the path of a car being driven in a normal fashion, the driver then reacts to miss the child and hits another vehicle killing the driver or his passenger, will the child that carelessly stepped onto the road or it's parents, be open to a charge of reckless behavior causing another to cause death by careless driving ????
Well certainly I presume there'd be some legal argument for the driver to be able to make some kind of claim against the child's family if their vehicle was damaged as a result of the collision. But somehow I imagine that would be the last thing on their mind...
I am confused about when careless driving becomes dangerous driving. If careless driving is not dangerous, is it even an offence? I would like to hear examples to more clearly define the differences.
Certainly when you hear some of the cases when people have been killed by clearly outrageous driving, and the offender gets off with a short ban and fine, then you feel the law needs to do better. But as is often the case, common sense rarely applies, and lawyers use technicalities to reduce the charge. Perhaps this needs to be changed, rather than creating new laws.
I am concerned that the new legislation will give disproportionate penalties for genuine accidents, or shift blame to motorists when someone else is at fault.
Racing Rod said:
If a child steps into the path of a car being driven in a normal fashion, the driver then reacts to miss the child and hits another vehicle killing the driver or his passenger, will the child that carelessly stepped onto the road or it's parents, be open to a charge of reckless behavior causing another to cause death by careless driving ????
No, because that's what childeren do. We all know that, its not a mystery, we can't change nature, we drive accordingly.
And too many drivers go swerving about all over the place, or braking too sharply or whatever. We choose to take our cars on the road, others shouldn't suffer because we make our choices. We must bear our responsibilities, and we certainly shouldn't try to offload them on to children.
Nice try though.
apache said:
No, because that's what children do.
Nice try though.
not my children, I taught em that roads were for fast hard things that would hurt when they could understand and I kept control of em till then
Quite, that's parental control and parental responsibility.
The point I make is that with bad laws you get bad results and those that do make genuine mistakes, repeat genuine mistakes, get criminalised and those who "innocently"(putting parental control and responsibility to one side for the moment) cause,or are involved in them to some extent or another,as with the child in my example, or indeed the parents of said child, could well find themselves part of the prosecution process under this law and the spin off ramifications
Stuartggray said:
It is another example of the 'kneejerk reaction' policy this Government is so inured with. They don't fix things, they respond to minorities who loudly proclaim 'It's not fair !!' without thinking of the actual, real life ramifications. They should be in charge of a primary school, not the country. Our 'right-on' PC lentil munchers have come home to roost, and rule the country.
If I had children I would not want this lot to "educate" them. Trouble is with state education that is exactly who would.
This government has been pushing lots of bad legislation through. They also seem to think that the driver to blame would never be troubled with the consequence his actions (or inactions). I very much doubt this would be the case.
When I drive I am more concerned with not having an accident because of the risk of harming people and property than avoiding a prison sentence.
cdp said:
When I drive I am more concerned with not having an accident because of the risk of harming people and property than avoiding a prison sentence.
Unfortunately a minority of selfish arrogant f'kwits aren't...and they're in posession of 1.5 tonne weapons. Hence you get more legislation because defence solicitors are too good at using loopholes and "reasonable doubt"!
I think we are veering a bit off-topic here. Surely the whole point of strengthening the careless driving legislation is because a) they took away the reckless driving charge (not really sure why they did that) and b) it is very difficult to prove dangerous driving.
I presume if someone is guilty of dangerous driving then there was definite intent to put life at risk. Careless driving charges however should apply to those drivers who are found to be negligent in their driving far beyond what would be consiered a 'lapse in concentration' and is designed to catch those who might feasibly 'get off' a dangerous driving charge, and not to catch the (allegedly) sensible majority who have made an innocent mistake.
In summary, a careless driving conviction should bear the same relation to dangerous driving as manslaughter does to murder.
JJ
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