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Police, judge and jury seem to have taken cyclist's death seriously.
His father says there is still “a huge amount of opposition” towards cyclists in the UK, adding that their presence on the roads is frequently seen as an obstacle and a nuisance to other road users.
Driver will be sentenced in three weeks it be will interesting see if it makes the national news.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_cambridge/displayarticle.asp?id=480531
Sad story, but as you say, being taken seriously. The one that gets me is the BBC story about the guy who blew his nose in stationary traffic and was fined. Given the number of drivers on mobiles, illegal parking and people doing reckless things I see everyday, this does seem a bit rich.
I was googling to see more on the above story and came across this from (gasp) the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1242798/Cyclist-wages-man-war-bad-drivers-secretly-filming-posting-clips-online.html#ixzz0e5oA0NFr">Cyclist wages one-man war against bad drivers by secretly filming them and posting clips online
"The one that gets me is the BBC story about the guy who blew his nose in stationary traffic and was fined."
Indeed. It's bad enough that the police did it, but there are other people involved in getting it to court.
Was he using one hand or two? (As the vehicle was stationary it hardly matters.) Presumably it's legal to change gear or switch radio channels with one hand on the steering wheel, so the one-handed nose blowing technique should probably be included in the driving test?
I heard that one of the policemen involved was also involved in this case (chap fined £50 for dropping a £10 note):
The Sun
As usual with tabloid stories you have to read to the end of the article to discover that the guy was actually fined for dropping actual litter.
So I can't help thinking that there's more to this nose blowing case.
I must admit that my initial reaction to the nose-blowing story was that there must be more to it, but none of the subsequent stories gave any further details/explanations.
It is about time that causing death by dangerous driving was treated as Manslaughter which is what it really is. It is not just cyclist, that are also a large number of pedestrians killed in this way every year. There really is a need to move away from the attitude that if you kill someone while driving that it is somehow OK.
Kim - Culpable Homicide at least as people don't get in their cars with the intent to harm others (I hope).
As you can see I am not a lawyer...
Isn't that what manslaughter is? People often get reduced charges of manslaughter rather than murder if the intention was not to kill. I have often thought this myself. If I go out in to the street and fire a rifle randomly into a crowd I would probably be charged with manslaughter at the least. But if I go out in a car and deliberately drive at people I am just being a bit careless.
I think this is a sadly unusual case that the driver was charged with dangerous driving as it is rarely seen as dangerous to kill someone while driving a car.
I am not a lawyer either but I think we will have it cleared up by opne. Culpabale homicide is a Scottish term I believe (tho sounds quite american).
I suppose the distinctions should be to do with intent. Murder most often appears intended but sometimes not premeditated. Mansluaghter you were definitely trying to do the guy (intended to inflict harm but not necessarily kill). CUlpable homicide - it was your fault but you had not intended any harm. That is Judge Gembo's world. I am sure the real world more complicated but I definitely think driving a car makes you culpable.
"Husband Peter Corless has told of his devastation after his cyclist wife was crushed to death by a monster 4x4 - and the driver escaped prosecution."
Gosh. I wish I hadn't read that story. Horrible.
SRD,
Yes it is but, even when in you factor in things like that, cycling is very safe. The usual figure quoted is 20 times safer than not cycling.
Anyway, back to watching Goldfinger in the afternoon with my boys.
Murder and Manslaughter in England and Wales; Murder and Culpable Homicide in Scotland. Manslaughter and CH are broadly similar, though not an exact match.
Murder generally must be premeditated. It involves to things: the actus reus, which is the actual committal of the act; and the mens rea, which is the thought in your mind that you actually want to kill the person.
In extreme circumstances a wilful disregard for someone's life 'might' constitute the mens rea, but in many cases would be hard to get past a court. Without the mens rea, therefore, you fall back on culpable homicide, which still requires a mental state of actively wishing to cause harm, or acting in a manner that was likely to cause harm.
The difficuly with deaths caused by driving is probably twofold. Firstly there are specific statutory offences (i.e. mandated by law issued by parliament) such as causing death by dangerous driving, and so the first thought whenever someone is killed on the roads is to use this codified law, which tends to have lesser sanctions than the 'common law' (murder and CH have been defined and amended over the years by court judgements, not what parliament says). Secondly, and it's tied in with the first point, it would likely be a lot harder to argue a case of CH in a court simply because proving the requisite lack of mental deliberation would be hard.
As has been said, very very very few people get into a car every day with the deliberate intention to hurt someone else on the road. So we have to look to the actions to see if they show a wilful disregard. Negligence, even extreme negligence, isn't necessarily such a wilful disregard, and each case would turn on the particular facts. Speeding, for example, on a motorway at 4am, you wouldn't expect to hit a cyclist - there is a chance, but a tiny one; speeding through a pedestrianised shopping area (to use a deliberate extreme) likely would show the necessary disregard.
So rather than run the risk of a court giving a not guilty verdict to a state of mind which you have to prove, the codified driving offences are much more likely to obtain a conviction.
Of course there's then the argument that often someone is killed, the driver is charged with causing death by dd, but negotiates it down to dangerous driving on its own, or causing death by careless driving (a relatively new offence), which are both obviously lesser offences, quite often not even resulting in a driving ban.
Thanks for that clear explanation of the Law, Anth.
Trawled the memory banks, some of it may not be perfect, but that should be a reasonably accurate assessment of things.
Lawyer, yes - Criminal lawyer, no (which could be read a couple of ways... ;) ).
The driver will have had to inform the DVLA of her "blackout" and will not have been allowed to drive again until she had tests to prove that she is fit to drive and has remained "blackout" free. If she has a cardiac problem, such as pauses or extreme bradycardia to account for blood loss to the brain, which is done by a cardiac monitor being fitted for periods of up to a week, and she does have this then there is no cure other than a pacemaker. I would have thought that it highly unlikely a woman of 35 would require a pacemaker, unless she has a dodgy heart or a possibly an undiagnosed illness or disease. That this is presyncopy is also unlikely, but as the case is never likely to come to court this sort of medical evidence will never be heard or known. She will be disallowed from driving for a period of up to six months. Personally I would assume if this has happened once I it could happen again if this truly was the cause. I hate 4x4's, they are huge and really frightening, and why the hell would she need a vehicle of this size unless she has a huge family, and even then I would suggest that there are other more suitable vehicles, and yet again someone driving a right gas guzzler in the vehicle on their OWN.
There is a real problem with the way in which the car culture runs deep within our justice system, driving offences are not taken seriously by the judiciary. Fortunately, there are some signs that things are changing.
"Woman jailed for cyclist's death in Cambridgeshire"
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