CityCyclingEdinburgh was launched on the 27th of October 2009 as "an experiment".
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Hit and run drunk-driver kills cyclist and is due to be sentenced.
http://road.cc/content/news/186251-hit-and-run-victims-family-calls-tougher-sentencing
Starts petition calling for compulsory helmets:
https://www.change.org/p/public-make-it-law-for-a-cyclist-to-wear-a-helmet
"I have been involved in an accident with a cyclist and he unfortunately died. He wasn't wearing a helmet or reflective clothing and had flashing lights."
What an absolute ****** *******.
Utter scum & change.org are little better for leaving it up.
I see she's been remanded in custody, so I trust she's having an extremely unpleasant time.
Seems she managed to find 15 like unminded idiots. The petition is now closed although so I'm not sure if change.org did leave it up.
Meanwhile this petition calls for a review of sentencing on such cases:
http://road.cc/content/news/186251-hit-and-run-victims-family-calls-tougher-sentencing
The fact that someone drink driving is only charged with careless driving shows how messed up the criminal justice system is. Drink driving should definitely fit the description of driving falling far below the standard that a reasonable person would expets.
Beyond belief
Pure deflection
OK so then motorists and all passengers must have:-
Nomex fire proof under-wear.
3 Layer racing suits.
FIA approved crash helmet (must be inspected by scrutineers before every car journey).
HANS device.
FIA approved fuel tank.
Carbon carbon disk brakes.
6 point safety belts for all occupants.
External inginition / fuel cut off switch.
Method of extracting all vehicle occupants in their seats.
Do all that and do you know what? Deaths will still occur where people drive badly and under the influence.
Beyond contempt. Sir Stirling Moss is right, take airbags out of cars and fix a spike in front of the driver and watch driving standards improve.
This makes me really angry that somebody can be in this mindset. Ultra worrying that there are people out there with this "logic" and we share the roads with them as cyclists, motorists, bus passengeres and pedestrians.
Just wow.
Claims the car was stolen; it wasn't.
Was charged with being almost double the alcohol limit ... and denied it.
And she obv thinks it was the cyclist's fault he died, given she started the petition.
Good article.
"This is a long-established trend. In 2014, it emerged that only 44 per cent of drivers convicted of killing cyclists in Britain were imprisoned by the courts. In comparison, about 60 per cent of drivers who have caused road deaths including pedestrians and other motorists are jailed. The average custodial sentence imposed on those who have killed cyclists, that same analysis found, was less than two years. For motoring offences overall it is three years."
Either there is widespread contributory negligence on the part of cyclists, or there is systematic discrimination against cyclists in the justice system.
"Either there is widespread contributory negligence on the part of cyclists,..."
I suspect that what is going through the judges' minds (wrongly) is that there was in fact some contributory negligence. From what I've read of case reports this 'negligence' is frequently alluded to by the defence, but equally the judges just can't put themselves in the position of someone on a bike. The negligence may just amount to 'being there'.
More fundamentally, justice is meant to punish the intent of an action, not the effect of the action. From my ill remembered moral philosophy tutorials, I recall the example of two individuals each shooting a gun across a room full of people. By complete chance, one hits and kills someone, the other one misses everyone. The argument is that both individuals should be punished equally, since it is the action that is significant and in their control, the outcome was random chance.
With "careless" or "dangerous" driving, the offence committed by the driver, be it inattention or a stupid manoeuvre, is generally carried out thousands of times a day by other drivers. By random chance, one driver in thousands causes injury or death by the action. In principle, the law should punish equally all the drivers, not just the one who, by blind chance, has caused the injury. Since this is never going to happen, judges just tend to go lightly on the one in a thousand, probably knowing themselves that they are guilty of occasional inattention or stupidity while driving.
That's a pretty powerful argument for top-quality infrastructure and road design that reduces the risks of such inattention as much as possible.
It does remind me of those warnings to women to stay at home in case of rape...
And don't own anything in case of thieves...
It's also a powerful argument to bring in presumed liability legislation to help change the driver mindset to be more cautious around more vulnerable road users (pedestrians, horses, cyclists).
Unfortunately the argument then runs counter to increased sentencing - "this happens thousands of times without consequence, so we shouldn't base the sentence on the consequences, rather than on the intent, and it was just a mistake, so here's a slap on the wrist".
Society really doesn't equate vehicles with dangerous weapons, so the "momentary inattention" will be judged on the average consequences rather than the potential severity, however unlikely...
Viewed from this angle I'm not sure that it does bolster presumed liability. "Everybody does it without consequences, so why should I be presumed liable just because I was unlucky to cause harm" (cf original post, where the driver was unlucky to kill someone!)
Robert
cf original post, where the driver was unlucky to kill someone!
A drunk driver was "unlucky"?
She was "unlucky" to have fled the scene and left the guy for dead?
@earthowned - agreed. BOTH would be nice!
A drunk driver was "unlucky"?
She certainly thinks so given that she blames the victim for dying.
Perhaps she was unlucky that public transport is so poor in some areas/times of day. Would anyone have felt more sympathy if she had started a petition for better public transport links?
Unless I have fallen asleep and woken up in an alternate universe where Roibeard is a completely different person, he is definitely NOT saying she was "unlucky". He was running with the theme of drivers driving dangerously and then believing themselves unlucky not to have gotten away with it like they always have done before. And as we all know, juries agree.
Unless we can understand the mentality, it is going to be hard to try and combat it. Though personally in this sort of case, I am inclined to go for pure hatred and sod the understanding.
@Charlethepar "justice is meant to punish the intent of an action, not the effect of the action", but Parliament decided to have different offences for 'dangerous driving' and 'causing death by dangerous driving', with more severe penalties possible for those who cause death.
Bad drivers often argue that they shouldn't be punished if no-one was hurt, so should they be punished more if someone dies?
Hm. All this puts me in mind of industrial accidents.
An employer can say "well the machine/facility is totally unsafe, but nobody was injured or died, so where's the problem?"
Whereas we know that if someone is injured or dies as a result of unsafe working conditions, there are likely to be consequences for the employer.
@slowcoach
Yes, real life is more complex than moral philosophy tutorials, and in reality people often think that it is "fair" if people are punished according to the effect of their action, regardless of the intent or whether the wrong action is extremely common and only very rarely leads to a bad outcome. This is reflected in some legislation. However, in reality dangerous driving is a rare offence to successfully prosecute, because the general level of carelessness out on the roads is so stupid and pervasive that a driver has to do something exceptional to count as dangerous. The low level of punishments for careless behaviour reflects the fact that these are actions that many drivers frequently take.
At the other extreme, one can imagine a system of justice that punished people according to the effect of their actions, regardless of their intent or whether they were being careless or dangerous. In this system of justice, if a driver caused a death of a pedestrian or cyclist, they would be locked up, no questions, as murderers. (You could call this "strict liability"). Now, in this alternative universe, everyone would drive very carefully, and fatalities would probably be much lower, which might be seen as a social good. However, if you were someone who hit a pedestrian who genuinely stepped into your path without you having any opportunity to react, you might find the system a little harsh in its effect on the individual.
If there were clearly-defined offences along the lines of 'driving exuberantly but within what the driver considers to be their capabilities on a road which fortunately turned out to be empty apart from the police camera van' (accompanied by 'temporary stealing' and so on in other spheres) then this "but no-one was hurt" crap might have a (very limited) place. As it is, perhaps offences/charges should all be prefaced "breaking the law by..." to make it clear what's going on. Part of the judicial process could include presenting ever-simpler (and progressively patronisingly-illustrated) analogies to the perpetrator until it could be proven that the reason for the existence of society-protecting laws had sunk in.
There's apparently a chunk of A1 somewhere near Haddington which has no cameras, no turns-on-or-off and other features which leads some people to believe that it's acceptable for them to turnip along it at their vehicle's maximal speed, forgetting that even if their loss of control initially only took theirself out that someone else could subsequently be adversely affected by their debris.
I like the idea of an alternate-universe-Roibeard...
Do I get superpowers?
;-)
Robert
PS Min was right, apologies for the lack of clarity on my opinion versus that of the criminal in charge of the car...
Do I get superpowers?
I believe it is traditional. :-)
However, if you were someone who hit a pedestrian who genuinely stepped into your path without you having any opportunity to react,
... then you were going too fast.
...so long as you agree to wearing underpants on the outside, obviously.
Comment not addressed at cc. Obviously.
... then you were going too fast.
Anything above walking pace is too fast if the pedestrian decides to dart out between cars or from behind a bus stop. This applies equally to buses and bikes, so unless the motion is to ban anything other than pedestrian motion upto and including power walking then I think you're going a bit far.
And just to head off "bikes are less dangerous so can go faster" we all know people die of head injuries slipping on the pavement so yes a glancing blow from even small cyclist at a not unreasonable pace can be fatal.
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