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Another 'It's Okay To Kill Cyclists' Story

(34 posts)
  • Started 12 years ago by Wilmington's Cow
  • Latest reply from Instography

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12

  1. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    Late 2010, two brothers were run over by a coach and killed. A jury has just acquitted the driver of dangerous driving AND causing death by careless driving (so no-one can blame the judge, this is Joe Public).

    The driver apparently said driving conditions were fine (wettish road, snow to the sides), sun was low, but not a problem, then was suddenly blinding (I wonder if they went to the road to see if there was something in the topography that made this happen?), he looked to the right (for a matter of seconds) to make sure he wasn't crossing the white line into oncoming traffic, then noticed a shadow (the two riders) in front of him.

    Now. At no point did he brake when suddenly blinded; but worse was that he admitted that his windscreen washers weren't working properly due to the temperatures, and he could only see 20-30 metres in front of him which (he also admitted) is a distance he wouldn't have been able to stop within.

    So basically he's admitted to driving too fast for the conditions. And yet. Full acquittal. We really do have some screwed up priorities.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  2. ARobComp
    Member

    Oh my word this is a bit of a nightmare. I genuinely think that people might be aquitting these sorts of people because they know that in the same situation they wouldn't have braked either and they want the same lax rule for when they mow down a pedestrian/cyclist.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  3. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    I think there's an aspect of that when it comes to juries in cases like this.

    "Would I have stopped to clean the windscreen, or would I have carried on hoping the washers unfroze? I'd have just carried on, goodness I hope I'm not as unlucky as this poor guy"

    Posted 12 years ago #

  4. PS
    Member

    This has really wound me up. I know this road well and it's a fast one, and one I'd be pretty wary of cycling on, but it's also straight as a die, so drivers are either able to see a long way in front of them or recognise that visbility is ropey and slow down.

    The latter point is important because for that stretch the A595 heads straight into the low winter sun. Any competent driver familiar with the road (which Mr Wightman, being a professional driver living locally, presumably is) should be aware of this and drive to the conditions. It appears that Mr Wightman did not. How this does not constitute either dangerous or careless driving is beyond me.

    I'm sorry to say I am drawing links between this jury's conclusions and casual comments from family and friends in West Cumbria that blames the victim when a cyclist is hit by other vehicles - "Well, it's a fast road, so why he's cycling on there? No hi-viz. He was asking for it... etc." The result of this case just reinforces these views.

    I was about to go all OT about my concerns about jury trials, but this isn't really the place beyond saying that, sadly, the above views suggest that in his peers' eyes, Wightman wasn't at fault. They're probably thinking, there but for the grace of God... but from the perspective of the motorist rather than the cyclist. :(

    Posted 12 years ago #

  5. le_soigneur
    Member

    Similar to a case on Road Cops or some similar Sky1 show a week or 2 ago. A busker was found on a dualled overpass, with his bike, dead. Late at night. A mini had left chrome mights surround and sure enough, a few hours later, a female student phone in to police to say she thought she'd hit an animal.
    The cyclist had no lights. Accepting that this was illegal and dangerous. However the police did not pursue the "leaving the scene of an accident" as they believed the story of hitting an animal, right up to the point of the "object" being at 3 feet from her windscreen. And the fact that a later passerby was able to identify a bicycle and body lying at the side of the road. The police didn't even bother to check her mobile phone records to see if she was on it at the time.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  6. Dave
    Member

    It shouldn't be surprising that juries are acquitting people who kill cyclists - at the end of the day it's a predictable consequence of cyclists' status as an out-group.

    You get hit, the police won't take an interest unless you're borderline intensive care and even then it's mainly to show face. There's almost no chance of the CPS bothering to prosecute, and to be honest it's hard to blame them when either the jury or the magistrates are likely to acquit or, at worst, mildly tick off the killer (good luck getting justice if you aren't actually dead).

    Bottom line - if a jury of your peers doesn't accept that killing a cyclist falls below the standards expected of a driver then effectively it's not a crime, whether it's on the statute book or not.

    We've a long way to go before this changes. For instance, between 2000-2010, all-white juries in Florida were 23% more likely to convict a black than a white defendant (this disparity disappeared if at least one juror was black). It might seem trite to compare cycling to civil rights, but the same mechanisms lie behind both.

    I've given serious thought to whether, if I'm ever called to jury service in the case of a cycling victim, I should pay any attention to the prosecution and defence, or try and deliver justice in wider social terms by insisting on a guilty vote. Difficult.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  7. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    You'd be there to judge on the facts. Any other consideration is a dereliction of that duty (as well as being contempt of court). I'm not sure the result here is as much evidence of cycling as an 'out group', as driving being an 'in group'. I think the jury members were considering themselves as drivers, not as non-cyclists (a subtle, but important, distinction).

    Posted 12 years ago #

  8. minus six
    Member

    ... and yet if the driver had mowed down a couple of pensioners crossing the road, i reckon the jury would, at least, have upheld a "careless driving" charge.

    Know your place, UK cyclist.

    The pavement, or the morgue.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  9. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    Again, more people are pedestrians and would probably judge it accordingly.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't think Joe Public is terribly sympathetic to cyclists, but I don't think the jury in this case were deliberately seeking to make a point that they hate cyclists - we're in danger of giving ourselves victim status here. It does happen (please don't see this as a black and white argument, I know many on internet fora are happy to do so) but the majority of drivers are not trying to kill us, and the majority of the general public don't actively wish we are dead or revel in cyclists being killed. What they do do is identify with certain things that they themselves do (drive, walk) and have their thinking influenced accordingly.

    Cyclists aren't immune to this - viz any thread about a cyclist being hit by a car immediately descending into vitriolic calls for the blood of the driver before we actually know the facts.

    We all have our prejudices based on our experiences and our lifestyles. That doesn't make it right; but it also doesn't mean everyone is out to get you.

    And Bax, you should know better, they don't want us on the road or the pavement or on cyclepaths funded out of their taxes.

    Back on OP, the jury, based on the facts released to the press, were wrong. But it's easy to see why, and I don't, genuinely, think it's to do with hatred of cyclists, and so so so much more to do with being drivers who have driven in the circumstances that came out in court and simply got lucky they'd never hit something. How could they convict? That would mean admitting, in themselves, that they had done something dangerous... (personally I'm just not a fan of juries).

    Posted 12 years ago #

  10. crowriver
    Member

    Know your place, UK cyclist.

    The pavement, or the morgue.

    Yes, depressing isn't it. I think this has a lot to do with the driving license as a right of passage into the adult world of responsibility and 'common sense'.

    If for some reason you fail to obtain your right of passage, or, worse, having gained right of passage you reject it and take to a form of transport which deviates from the norm, there is immediately something 'wrong' with you in many people's eyes.

    Cyclists are annoying too. On the road, we're 'in the way'. On the pavement, we're 'dangerous'. In fact why don't we just go away and stop causing problems for everyone else?

    Completely irational and unjustifiable prejudice, of course. Since when has that stopped anybody froim having strong views on cyclists, public transport users, etc.?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  11. Min
    Member

    Anth - Then why did you title the thread "its okay to kill cyclists"?

    Personally I think the attitude of the driver is absolutely disgusting.

    "“I would not like to say whether it was my fault, their fault or a combination of both.”

    In whose universe could it have been their fault? Oh yes right, this one. It was their fault for being there.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  12. Instography
    Member

    @anth
    I think that's the point Dave's making. If, as you say, "the jury members were considering themselves as drivers, not as non-cyclists" then the driver has been judged by a jury of his peers but they are plainly not the peers of the cyclist. Their capacity and willingness to align themselves with the driver, to see the problems of the driver as unfortunate and not uncommon problems of driving and the outcome as the unfortunate but unavoidable outcome of dealing with the everyday problems of driving, allows them to acquit the driver even though he has, by his own admission, killed someone because he could not see what was in the road in front of him.

    They cannot identify with the cyclist as a real human being whose presence on the road could be regarded as a serious possibility due some consideration by someone in charge of a bus. The cyclist has got in the way of the bus and even if it's not his fault that he he got in the way of the bus, neither is it the driver's fault.

    Juries don't judge on facts. At best they select between competing interpretations of the facts. How they select depends very much on whether they are willing and able to identify with the alleged perpetrator or victim. That's why much of competing cases turns on establishing victims as non-victims (as sluts or assailants who were 'asking for it' or like wandering sheep in the road) and try to establish perpetrators as victims or at least as innocents blamelessly drawn into an unfortunate set of events. That juries of drivers tend to side with accused drivers rather than their victims suggests that the cyclists (and pedestrians) are, although I dislike the simplistic connotations of the term, out.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  13. Roibeard
    Member

    @Anth - personally I'm just not a fan of juries

    Hmmm, coming from Norn Iron, I'd be cautious here. Yes, I know juries can be biased towards the defendant (it's inherently built in by having a peer jury), and can struggle with technicalities (legal or scientific), but I can't say that the Diplock courts were an improvement...

    Although maybe that's my scientific background, valuing peer review too highly!

    @Min - It was their fault for being there.

    Or they didn't have bright enough rear lights.

    Robert

    Posted 12 years ago #

  14. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    Because the title wasn't "It's okay to kill cyclists" the title was "Another "It's okay to kill cyclists" story", which is how it was presented, and the "It's okay to kill cyclists" was/is in parentheses as it was referring to that reporting elsewhere (the linked road.cc page).

    Of course the title still holds anyway. 'It's okay to kill cyclists because your jury will be made up of drivers', rather than 'it's okay to kill cyclists because your jury will hate cyclists'.

    I don't think the disgusting attitude of the driver (as reported) is in doubt.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  15. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    "... can struggle with technicalities (legal..."

    The jury is specifically not there to deal with legal technicalities, that's the role of the judge. Juries don't convict or acquit on the basis of the law, but rather on the facts of a case.

    They can only rule and be used on cases involving common law crimes, those which (as the majority are in the UK, all different jurisdictions) are not written down in a big red book (as they are in, say, France). This is why juries can cause anomalies, run counter to common sense, and certainly run counter to what is perceived to be the law.

    If any legal technicality comes up in a case then the judge rules on that.

    Scientific, financial fraud, detailed cases like that, yep, they can throw up really technical stuff that can utterly bamboozle a jury (I'd imagine on many of these cases people had ruled on gut instinct rather than an understanding).

    Posted 12 years ago #

  16. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    @insto

    "That juries of drivers tend to side with accused drivers rather than their victims suggests that the cyclists (and pedestrians) are, although I dislike the simplistic connotations of the term, out."

    I agree, but the turn of the coversation was that the jury would not convict because cyclists are an out-group, whereas I think it's more because drivers are the in-group. I appreciate it's a very tight distinction, but one suggests deliberately going against cyclists, the other siding with a driver. The result is, yes, that cyclists are 'out' (have to admit it's a term I don't particularly like either), but I don't think it's the reason for the decision, more that the jury is 'in'. That's explained really poorly, like I say, it's a tight distinction.

    "Juries don't judge on facts. At best they select between competing interpretations of the facts"

    That's semantics. You're right, of course, but the basic point that they don't judge on the 'law' remains. They judge on the facts as best they can determine from what they hear. Which isn't as catchy a sounndbite. 'Facts' is the guiding principle.

    I can see this being another thread that descends - I think I'm going to drop out.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  17. crowriver
    Member

    @anth, that's like playing 'tig' and after tigging someone then claiming you're in a 'den' so can't be tigged back.

    I don't get this 'it's because they're in, not because we're out' distinction. Clearly, if they are in, we are out! You further claim drivers don't actively hate cyclists. Yeah, lots of people who are white claim not to be racist, but...

    There's a group psychology at work here which unfortunately is more powerful than an individual's sense of morality and the law. That leads not only to a bias in favour of their 'kin' but also a bias against those who are not.

    Hence the killer can get away with saying it might have been the cyclists' fault because, after all, what were they doing on the road anyway?

    Posted 12 years ago #

  18. LivM
    Member

    Tragically, when someone is killed, their personal point of view is lost from the court case, leaving the Defence to drop "we'll never know..." into their case, and putting doubt in the minds of the jury is frequently enough to mean that they can't convict. ("Beyond Reasonable Doubt" is a difficult concept to explain).

    If the defendant has done enough to put themselves forward as a fine upstanding member of society, then the jury will maybe think "don't want to wreck their family's lives, just like another family's lives have been wrecked", when it "might not have been anything he could have avoided".

    Posted 12 years ago #

  19. Roibeard
    Member

    @Anth The jury is specifically not there to deal with legal technicalities, that's the role of the judge.

    Possibly not ideally phrased - I understand that the judge applies the law and directs the jury on the technicalities, yet my recent experience as a juror revealed that we didn't understand all that happened (perhaps we should have asked!).

    For example, the two cases I saw had the accused enter a plea which only appeared to address one charge, not the other - we didn't know if that meant they accepted their guilt on the first charge, and disputed the second, or had entered no plea, and thus weren't certain if we were to make a determination on that charge.

    Perhaps it would have become clear further down the line - I wasn't selected for the first jury, and the accused changed their plea to guilty within a few hours of the trial starting in the second case.

    In terms of the judge's direction, wouldn't a "you should find the defendant guilty if they've committed the crime, even if you yourself have done the same thing without being caught out" be in order? That strikes me as being the legal technicality that might have been overlooked in the case under discussion...

    Robert

    Posted 12 years ago #

  20. Wilmington's Cow
    Member

    @crowriver

    "I don't get this 'it's because they're in, not because we're out' distinction. Clearly, if they are in, we are out! You further claim drivers don't actively hate cyclists. Yeah, lots of people who are white claim not to be racist, but..."

    Sigh. I never said that they're in but we're not out. Indeed, if people would read I said, "The result is, yes, that cyclists are 'out'...".

    What I said is that....

    Decision made on basis you hate cyclists if you see cyclists as out group;
    Decision made on basis you yourself would have done what the driver did if you see drivers as the in group.

    Also crowriver I didn't "further claim drivers don't actively hate cyclists", but actually said "... the majority of drivers are not trying to kill us"

    That's three times in one thread now I've been misquoted and had the meaning of what I said completely changed as a result.

    Like I said. Cannae be bothered. Ta ra.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  21. crowriver
    Member

    Well you said quite a few slightly different things. However I shall not pick nits, I'll leave that to the barrack room lawyers ;-)

    I suppose the point that I and several others (including yourself in part) have alluded to is this: when one identifies primarily with driving as a part of one's identity (quite a major part for many), one also buys into myths and prejudices against non-drivers (including cyclists) in order to bolster and support the correctness of one's own chosen identity.

    Hence the jury will believe not only that the killer was just unlucky and it could have happened to anyone, but also that the cyclists should not have been there, were being 'brave'/reckless/a menace to society, and therefore at least in part deserved their fate, however unfortunate for them and their families.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  22. Roibeard
    Member

    @anth - must be the weather, didn't crowriver also confess to being tetchy last week?

    You're making a subtle distinction, CR doesn't understand the subtlety on this occasion, rather than deliberately misrepresenting you.

    Now, 1, 2, 3, breathe and *group hug*

    Robert
    (all sunshine and ponies today)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  23. crowriver
    Member

    must be the weather, didn't crowriver also confess to being tetchy last week?

    Not that I recall!

    You're making a subtle distinction, CR doesn't understand the subtlety on this occasion, rather than deliberately misrepresenting you.

    I think I said "don't get" rather than "don't understand". A polite way of saying I don't agree!

    Posted 12 years ago #

  24. Dave
    Member

    @anth, I think you're in danger of making an artificial distinction - either that or I'm another who doesn't understand what you're trying to say.

    It's helpful to think of it in terms of race I think - it's not that white people on a modern jury in the US hate black people, although they're significantly more likely to convict them which implies some (more subtle, doubtless complex blend of ) systematic bias.

    I don't think that juries, judiciary, police, CPS and so on hate cyclists in the UK either. I don't see how 'hate' comes into the definition of in/out groupism at all really. They're just unable to identify with them while they find it easy to identify with, to rationalise and to justify the behaviour of their driving peer in the dock.

    Providing you accept group theory, which I think is pretty well established as a mechanism for describing behaviour, it doesn't really matter if you prefer to think that drivers are 'just siding with drivers' rather than 'not sympathising with non-drivers', it's two sides of the same coin, and one follows from the other.

    If I had been on that jury I would have harangued them mercilessly with scenarios like "What if your car had broken down and the coach driver slammed into it and killed your wife and kids because he couldn't be bothered fixing his windscreen or even slowing down when he couldn't see? How can we *not* convict him? Are the lives of your family so worthless that you don't think people need to watch where they're going? What kind of man are you?" etc.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  25. Instography
    Member

    I don't think the original comparison with the elevated conviction rates by all-white juries in Florida helps much.

    I think we can safely assume (or at least I do) that motorists, even the ones who really do hate cyclists, are not actually trying to kill cyclists. They're perhaps not trying very hard not to but you can add that to the list of subtle distinctions. Nevertheless, judges, being wise and knowing the ways of human thought, having seen the many ways in which unconscious prejudice can sway people's understanding of facts, have an important job to do. They should instruct juries on what they need to consider and perhaps they do not do that well enough.

    They might, for instance, say, "members of the jury, Mr Coach Driver is charged with the very serious offence of causing death by dangerous driving. There is no doubting that Mr Coach Driver was in charge of the vehicle that killed Mr Cyclist. In reaching your verdict you must decide whether on that day, Mr Coach Driver's conduct of his vehicle fell sufficiently below the standards of a reasonable driver to be considered dangerous. It matters not what his intentions were or what pressures he was under. You must judge whether, in the context of the weather, the road conditions and the condition of his vehicle, his decision to proceed along the road at whatever speed he was doing, unable to see beyond the tip of his nose, and unable to stop anyway constituted dangerous driving. If the fact that he killed someone doesn't make the answer obvious enough, you have heard from the prosecution that it is the duty of all drivers, especially professional drivers, to consider very carefully the consequences of their decisions when they are in charge of huge vehicles capable of crushing a human like a grape. Against that, you have heard from the defence that Mr Coach Driver is generally careful and has never done anything like this before. You have also heard that he is very sorry. These are the facts (and some special pleading). You, the jury, must decide".

    Posted 12 years ago #

  26. Dave
    Member

    I don't think the original comparison with the elevated conviction rates by all-white juries in Florida helps much.

    You don't think if we could break down verdicts in cycling victim cases by all-driver and mixed driver-cyclist juries there wouldn't be a large disparity in conviction rates?

    It's unfortunate that we don't track anything like this in reality. I'm not even sure it would be worth trying to compare conviction rates of juries in general between driving and cycling offenders, although at least that data might be possible to find?

    There are other measures I suppose, like what proportion of people are prosecuted in the first place in the two cases of: driver strikes a pedestrian and remains at the scene VS cyclist strikes a pedestrian and remains at the scene (perhaps parameterised by the fate of the pedestrian?)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  27. Roibeard
    Member

    I opined: must be the weather, didn't crowriver also confess to being tetchy last week?

    Crowriver piped up: Not that I recall!

    I was being a bit vague, as a search (topical at the mo') didn't help. I was pretty sure someone admitted to being a bit grumpy (and it wasn't me this time!).

    I'll save my oil for future troubled waters instead...

    Robert
    (skipping off in a cloud of displaced butterflies, leaving an oily streak behind)

    Posted 12 years ago #

  28. Instography
    Member

    You said: "Bottom line - if a jury of your peers doesn't accept that killing a cyclist falls below the standards expected of a driver then effectively it's not a crime, whether it's on the statute book or not.

    We've a long way to go before this changes. For instance, between 2000-2010, all-white juries in Florida were 23% more likely to convict a black than a white defendant (this disparity disappeared if at least one juror was black). It might seem trite to compare cycling to civil rights, but the same mechanisms lie behind both."

    For a start, your 'bottom line' is wrong. In almost all of these cases the question for the jury to decide is not whether the driver was driving at the time of the death and therefore killed a cyclist. That's generally beyond dispute. The question is always about the standard of their driving. The death on its own is not enough. If the standard of their driving was not careless or dangerous then legally they have committed no crime. The same applies to murder (if the death was not premeditated), manslaughter (if the death was not a foreseeable outcome of their actions), etc etc. There needs to be both death and culpability for a crime to exist.

    If the 'bottom line' is wrong then your second point, that "we've a long way to go before this changes" logically falls.

    But in general I do think it's trite to compare drivers attitudes to cyclists with institutionalised racism or civil rights.

    I think there is certainly a problem in how the criminal justice system handles cyclists' deaths but I don't think it lies primarily in the composition of juries. The poor decisions by juries is symptomatic of a more general problem.

    Posted 12 years ago #

  29. minus six
    Member

    Lots of interesting discussion to be had here, if it wasn't so futile and depressing.

    Crowriver -- I agree on the driving license ritualised adulthood problem. Its a sad reflection of our shallow society.

    Anth -- you mention the jury probably would accept identification with pedestrians as a group -- i think its unlikely to be that clear cut, and more a jury affinity with perceived vulnerability.

    was pedestrian a pensioner? aww, shame

    pedestrian a child ? aww, shame

    young adult? no, probably up to something dodgy

    full adult? no, they should have taken greater care

    cyclist? you must be joking, guv

    Posted 12 years ago #

  30. PS
    Member

    I doubt they'd have been sympathetic to a ped being killed on this stretch of the A595. It's a straight and fast A road through the countryside. If the coach driver had hit the ped, the general jury view would, I suspect, have been "What's the ped doing walking there? How could the Mr Wightman have been expected to expect a ped on the road?" as opposed to "Wightman
    should have been driving to the conditions."

    To add some context to this particular discussion, here is the stretch of road in question:
    A595
    How badly would you have to be doing your job as a coach driver to not see someone on your carriageway here?

    Posted 12 years ago #

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