CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
"Killer driver walks free from court after blaming her diet for crash"
(18 posts)-
Posted 13 years ago #
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240 hours and a five year ban is much more than most drivers who kill will get...
Posted 13 years ago # -
Ever so slightly misleading headline which infers the diet excuse is what made her avoid prison. Medical evidence didn't back her up so she changed her plea to guilty. The diet excuse is completely irrelevant in the end.
Posted 13 years ago # -
I think it is relevant as it shows she was lying to try and get out of being shown up as a dangerous driver.
Posted 13 years ago # -
unbelievable really
understandable,the fury at the courtPosted 13 years ago # -
Does the Hootsmon not have a red eye removal tool or would that manipulation of photos be frowned upon now?
Posted 13 years ago # -
Presumably they just took it straight off Faceevil like all the media do nowadays rather than asking the family for a photo.
unbelievable really
No not really. I bet she wouldn't even have got the ban if she had killed a cyclist.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Kenneth Roy wrote a piece a few months ago about one of the first jobs he had as a journalist was getting a photo of a girl who had died. He still feels bad about it.
It's not nice from the other side either but back in the day we said no when the Record and others came sniffing. Perhaps it would be more difficult to prevent these days although if they have a squint at my Facebook page they will find a picture of a Bile Beans tin. They could probably get photos of me from other people.
Posted 13 years ago # -
'Irrelevant' to her not going to prison. And she plead guilty so her claim on the diet doesn't then form part of any judgement. The headline remains misleading/deliberately inflammatory.
Have to agree, however, that if a cyclist had been killed 200+ hours community service and a five year ban would be heavier than the norm (though we must remember not unknown).
Posted 13 years ago # -
"And she plead guilty so her claim on the diet doesn't then form part of any judgement. "
But only after being called out on the diet claim. Does only pleading guilty after you have been caught lying really not make any difference to the sentence?
But I see what you mean about the headline being misleading. It does make it look as if the reason she was not jailed was the diet thing.
Posted 13 years ago # -
yet again, just goes to show how upstanding the lawyers in this country are ! :(
Posted 13 years ago # -
@Min...if you change your plea to guilty then you are considered to have shown remorse and to have seen the error of your ways, although you may have lied consistently beforehand. Most people plead not guilty if they think that there is the slightest chance they will get away with it, and also commit perjury. However, it is a matter of perception in many cases, and the accused may well really believe that they have done nothing wrong. If you change your plea halfway through a case even, or just before the jury goes out, you may get a reduced sentence...in the States it is called plea bargaining. However, if you insist that you are not guilty and are in fact found guilty generally you receive a stiffer sentence.
Posted 13 years ago # -
@splitshift I'm going to start making some sweeping generalisations about lorry drivers....
Posted 13 years ago # -
"If you change your plea halfway through a case even, or just before the jury goes out, you may get a reduced sentence...in the States it is called plea bargaining."
Now that you come to mention it I have heard of that. Something to do with making it easier on everyone, particularly witnessess/victims (where still living). I suppose there does have to be some sort of incentive for people to own up in that case.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Taking it all at face value, it seems that the woman's car crossed the carriageway and crashed into the learner's car but with no real evidence of carelessness or dangerous driving beforehand. The police evidence is that there was no evidence of speeding, no drugs, alcohol or mobile phone distraction. Most importantly, there was no evidence of braking. She does seem to have drifted across the road and crashed for no apparent reason.
Her QC explained the reason for entering a not guilty plea - with no obvious reason for the crash, they felt that she must have blacked out before the crash and that might have been caused by her diet. When the Crown's expert dismissed that possibility the plea was changed to guilty.
Frankly, her lawyer should have (and may have) advised her to stick to her not guilty plea. With no evidence of carelessness prior to the crash, the Crown would have had a hard job proving carelessness. Instead she took responsibility for someone else's death. If she'd wanted to, I doubt it would have been too difficult to find an expert to argue that an extreme low calorie diet could cause someone to black out.
The press and family response seems fairly typical. Something bad has happened therefore someone must be to blame. That someone should be punished severely and something done so that this kind of thing never happens again. Sometimes accidents happen that are just accidents.
Posted 13 years ago # -
@ anth......so,the same as most ???
actually I know a few very decent lawyers ! never needed their services myself , cept for the house selling types !! standing corrected ! : )
m,lurd !Posted 13 years ago # -
@instography - I take on board what you are saying but very worrying is the fact that this woman had absolutely no recall of events on leaving Dalkeith, 25 miles away. That was her last memory. The road must have been awfully boring and she zoned out. She really was not fit to be driving for whatever reason. Having total amnesia for 25 miles travelling distance is quite alarming, at 50 mph that is half an hour. She must have fallen asleep because a black out does not last that long. I wonder if she had a 24-hour tape and an EEG to find out if there was a further possible physical cause for her to have "blacked out".
I don't really buy the idea that it was nobody's fault...my parked car, outside my house, was written off one morning by a van that slewed into it and according to Southwark police it was nobody's fault...well it certainly was not mine, I was not even in it, or perhaps it was.... I should not have parked my car there, of course...it was icy that day, and the van driver was going too fast to negotiate a bend in the road hit the brakes but went straight on, he had a host of navvies in the back of his van, also illegal, adding several stone to the weight of the vehicle. The van and the van driver were entirely responsible for writing my car off. Driving without due consideration for the road conditions. Like the bloke whose car left the road and onto a train line that an oncoming train crashed into, when he fell asleep at the wheel due to being on the internet all night and having had only a couple of hours sleep, not fit to be driving, there were no drink/drugs/mobile phone use in that case either.
Posted 13 years ago # -
Is amnesia after a severe crash that unusual? It doesn't tell us much about her condition before or during the accident. It certainly doesn't mean that she was 'zoned out' or sleeping for 25 miles.
Based on the information available, something seems to have happened to her. It seems clear that she wasn't doing any of the usual and obviously careless things and she wasn't in a position to prevent the crash by doing the obvious thing - braking. There doesn't seem much basis for assigning blame unlike the case of your van, where the driver's inability to negotiate a bend in nice seems careless or, you could argue, the bloke who could have been expected to be aware of his impairment when driving on very little sleep.
Posted 13 years ago #
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