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RULES No personal insults. No swearing.
Unfortunately, Sheriff Alastair Carmichael has form in cases such as this. Is he a keen motoring enthusiast perchance? I think we should be told. See upthread:
https://stv.tv/news/north/1429340-woman-who-ran-over-children-outside-mcdonald-s-avoids-jail/
I don't even know if this is rubbish or not. Eight weeks of unpaid work?
banned from driving for 10 years.
Would prison make things better in this case? The driver doesn't appear to be a serial offender and a ten year ban is pretty hefty by comparison.
Would prison make things better in this case?
No. Certainly not. Restorative justice is surely the thing, I just wondered about the amount of it and the quality.
I don't think that's a rubbish sentence.
Don't know if this has been posted already but an interesting programme about the CPS and their treatment of a careless / dangerous driving case.
Watched this this morning. Very interesting.
Watched this this morning. Very interesting.
I watched that also and found it quite moving at the end. Lots of interesting aspects but it also gave me the impression that, at the end of the day, road crime is treated as 'not proper crime' by the CPS.
Daily Mail alert - I'll admit to not knowing the full story but the way the driver has been transposed into a victim in the below has really wound me up
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6573281/Lorry-driver-breaks-tears-death-Queens-doctor.html
@edinburgh87 I thought that article was surprisingly balanced for the Daily Mail. In some ways the driver is a victim: there was no suggestion that she was unfit to drive (unlike many similar cases) and I can certainly envisage a situation where a bike and rider can end up in the driver's blind spot through no fault of the driver and there's nothing the driver can do to avoid that. The driver is, quite rightly, devastated and I feel for her in a way that I don't for the drivers who knowingly take to the road in big lorries while unfit through drink, drugs, exhaustion or whatever, and who deserve to go to jail for a long time.
Ultimately the fault lies with those in power who allow big lorries to be on the same road as people on bikes.
I do take issue with the article referencing the fact that the victim was wearing a helmet. That is totally irrelevant to this article about being driven over by a lorry, but that's a point for another thread.
Uninsured driver who didn’t clear his windscreen kills a woman on a zebra crossing: careless driving, 10 months in jail, 23 month ban from driving.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-46945366
“A truck driver who crashed head-on into a BMW killing a 55-year-old man has been ordered to carry out community service. Ronald Bridges, 59, crashed into Michael Laverty's car after overtaking a car which was slowing down to turn right.
Judge Lady Stacey ordered him to perform 150 hours of unpaid work in the community and banned him from driving for four years.
"This is a tragedy. This was caused by a momentary inattention on your part. Drivers have a duty to be vigilant on the road."
Lady Stacey said that, in the circumstances, a jail sentence was not necessary.“
Strictly speaking, perhaps "rubbish charging" rather than "rubbish sentencing".
https://metro.co.uk/2019/01/30/son-wealthy-couple-killed-two-audi-crash-cant-name-8416176
17 year old sentenced to two years supervision order, a £105 fine and banned from driving for two years after killing two pedestrians whilst driving after smoking cannabis.
The sentence was for the cannabis bit, not the killing pedestrians bit.
"He was not accused of any offences in relation to the deaths of pedestrians John Shackley and Jason Imi."
Magistrate: "However, there are no charges in relation to the standard of your driving on that day."
Don't think Chris Boardman was impressed with this one:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-47071273
even if it's just the terminology ("careless" vs "dangerous") which sticks in his craw.
Could also be regarded, as Frenchy's example, as rubbish charging. It does seem sometimes that the DPP is a bit over-eager to accept the trade-off of a guilty plea to a lesser charge vs the time & money required to secure a meaningful conviction for a more serious offence. If the accused is prepared to admit that they were committing a summary offence (in this case, it appears Mr Rosney admits he was using his phone while driving) then that should significantly reduce the chances of getting away with the "careless" charge.
I don't know the facts of the case but
"Carol Boardman, 75, died in July 2016 after she fell off her bike in Deeside"
strikes me as probably being rubbish journalism as well.
strikes me as probably being rubbish journalism as well.
Sentence has now been amended to:
"Carol Boardman, 75, was hit in July 2016 after she fell off her bike in Deeside, Flintshire."
The perp actually going to jail, even if for 33 weeks well 16.5 weeks seems small for taking someone's life. Yet I am surprised he went down.
Apparently it is possible to get a conviction for dangerous driving, sentence is longer but still barely appropriate for what are likely life changing injuries.
- Run someone over and kill them
- Blame the driver in the car behind
- Change your story and blame the poor pedestrian
Result: 300 hours community service
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-47545937
Yes, in fact I'm not sure why any international assassins bother with covert and arcane methods of murder. Simply run someone over with a car/van/lorry and await the lenient hand of the law for the slight wrist slap.
It's ok - she's been banned from driving for 2 years as well... I would have thought perverting the cause of justice would have been more punishment? Although maybe that's what they got the community service for, rather than the driving a car into someone.
Not Edinburgh but don't know if I'm more enraged by the article or the comments:
Not his fault, he only mounted the pavement. Their fault as were wearin dark clothes.
Incredibly Masonic sentence
and besides "...McLeod, a former antique shop owner, needs his licence as he currently drives around 20,000 miles per year as part of his employment as a manager of a children’s nursery."
Why do the courts continue to take this into consideration. I need a computer to continue in my line of work but were I to undertake to hack the government's servers then I'm sure the courts wouldn't take that into account when passing sentence.
I'm struggling to figure out exactly where this was.
"Country path" and "pavement" would seem mutually exclusive to me. The Brunstane path runs parallel to Daiches Braes, but there are a load of trees in between the road and the path, so I presume the driver didn't really drive through that. So I'm guessing they were just on the pavement of Daiches Braes, in which case why call it "a country path"?
Best guess is that it was in the middle portion of Daiches Braes, where there aren't any houses.
I think longer sentence for lying about driving 20000 miles as the manager of a children's nursery? What would necessitate this amount of driving in that job?
"Blinded by an oncoming van" is too convenient an excuse that just gets accepted all the time.
Also that point about him not seeing the pedestrians as they were wearing dark clothes. Well firstly, they were on the pavement, but secondly, does that mean he would not have mounted the pavement if he had seen them?
Oh and, "I wish I could remember what happened". How on earth can this be accepted?
So basically saying, I was blinded so there was nothing I could do, but if I'd seen the pedestrians I would have been able to do something, but in any event I can't remember anything.
I count 3 speedbumps on that road: Here, Here and Here. The first one is by a load of houses, so is presumably well lit. The second two are less well lit, so I guess the van came over one of those two.
The driver was presumably driving East (if not, they drove across the other side of the road to mount the pavement), so I'd guess the driver was about here when the van came over the speed bump - the last bump is around the corner, so probably wouldn't have dazzled the driver.
If that's the case (And I know there's lots of ifs and buts), then the driver and van were both heading along a straight road, yet the driver was surprised when the van went over the speed bump, so swerved onto the pavement, over the kerb?
The mind boggles.
Surely if he was that blinded he should have just stopped. It is ridiculous that being temporarily blinded is accepted as an excuse!
In the picture its does not look like an intended drop kerb beside the pavement.
The kerb appears not to be high enough from the road to emphasise the pavement a lack of demarcation. The kerb appears to be below normal height from the road, due to the speed bump.
If that road and pavement had a more usual kerb to road height, it may well be this dodgy driving incident would not have had the same consequence.
Of course if cannot see should have stopped but if a normal kerb height between road and pavement the driver may well have felt car mount the pavement, at a low speed and shallow angle it may just have rubbed the kerb as would have resisted the car.
http://www.standardsforhighways.co.uk/ha/standards/dmrb/vol6/section3/ta5787.pdf
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