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Dangerous drivers could face longer jail terms under a proposal to go before Parliament.
A new crime of causing serious injury by dangerous driving will carry a maximum sentence of five years.
Most people jailed for dangerous driving receive sentences of less than two years.
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'Drivers in Scotland, which has its own legal system, will commit an offence where they cause "severe physical injury".'
Unless they have a Top Gear fan Sheriff, in which case they will get off lightly, even if they kill a cyclist whilst on the wrong side of the road and driving over the speed limit...
@crowriver, you've spotted the cause of the new offence being created; there is just too big a gap between the definitions and punishments relating to the current 'momentary lapse' and 'sustained period of dangerous driving', which means that sheriffs end up looking at the former. The estimate is that there will only be a couple of Scottish convictions a year under this legislation.
The key phrase here is, "will carry a maximum sentence of five years". Causing death by dangerous driving carries a tariff up to 14 years in prison. In reality, certainly from the reported cases, it's unusual for a prison sentence to be used at all, and when it is the sentence is regularly less than 5 years (usually because there is a plea bargain down to Causing Death by Careless Driving which has a maximum tariff of 5 years).
As pointed out above, the number of actual convictions under this new offence will proably be tiny, as most will plea bargain down. And with 'injury' the plea bargain down will be to just 'Dangerous Driving' (maximum tariff of 2 years).
@Anth, absolutely right, but you can console yourself that any motorcyclists who get charged will normally feel the full weight of the legislation so it's ok really... after all, if you do a car driver it might affect their job.
I don't understand why they feel the need to have all these offences - it's quite rediculous (and counterproductive). I can't think of any other thing like it ("causing death by dangerously dropping a brick from scaffolding", no wait, he bargained down to merely "causing death by carelessly dropping a brick from scaffolding", or even "dropping a brick without due care and attention").
There should be one simple requirement on people, that is, that they drive in a safe manner. If they fail to do so, they should be charged with an offence, defined as any lapse in standards, whether momentary or more prolonged, such that either an injury/death/damage to property did occur, or would be likely to occur in less fortunate circumstances.
It would be much easier to obtain a conviction for "driving unsafely" because while a jury may wrangle over whether to convict on "causing death by X" (or was it merely causing injury by X, simply X, or a lesser offence altogether - where X in {careless, dangerous}), there is not much debate over whether someone was unsafe, especially if an injury did actually occur and there is a victim / deceased as a result.
Then, having established that the motorist was in charge of the vehicle in question and the vehicle in question caused (or risked) outcome X, Y, and Z, the judge would sentence according to guidelines.
It would not be possible to get off lightly with driving at 150% of the speed limit round a corner on the wrong side of the road (unless the jury decided that was not unsafe) because the judge's hands would be tied - speeding, wrong side of the road, blind corner, death caused = serious smack down.
Even better, by manipulation of the guidelines you could focus on different issues, without the need to create artificial new laws.
I thought lots of offences had variations that took account of context and intent. There's loads of ways of considering the manner in which a person had caused or been involved in the death of another person - murder, manslaughter (voluntary and involuntary), encouraging and assisting suicide, euthanasia, infanticide etc.
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