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Car involved in Nottingham hit and run (taken from YouTube video).jpgVideo: Shocking Nottingham hit and run – cyclist says driver was not prosecuted
This recently published video shows the moment when a Nottingham cyclist was hit from behind near the BBC roundabout in Nottingham in November 2014. The uploader, who employs the username Reginald Scot, says that despite the shocking nature of the crash, the driver was not prosecuted.
The victim says that he sustained a severe back injury and internal haemorrhaging in the collision and took four months to recover.
Reginald Scot says there was no confrontation with anyone prior to the attack and that he did not know the driver or the car. Nor was he riding his normal route and so doesn’t believe the attack was planned.
Writing in the comments beneath the video, he mentions that the vehicle involved was a courtesy car (he doesn't explain how he came by that information) and it seems there may have been issues proving the identity of the driver. Suggesting that a combination of factors “came together to create a legal loophole” he adds that he is reluctant to outline the details for fear that someone might try and copy the incident – although he has also suggested he may do a follow-up video to explain the situation better.
Rhia Favero from CTC commented:
“I have a feeling the problems with this case have little to do with whether helmet/handlebar camera footage is permissible evidence, but rather to do with the police's inability to trace the driver. I'm sure most people will find it incredible that the driver couldn't be traced when the courtesy car company must have their details on file.
“I really hope we get to the bottom of how this driver managed to get away with running into the back of someone, seriously injuring them, and fleeing the scene. And I hope lessons are learned so that other criminal drivers don't get away with this sort of downright dangerous behaviour.'
road.cc has contacted both Nottinghamshire police and the Crown Prosecution Service for comment.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
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78 comments
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/120623/sponsors/5IZdXnonAMrQNsH...
"My petition:
Increase the penalty for failing to provide driver details under s172 RTA 1988
Failing to provide details of a driver involved in an offence is 6pts and £1000. This can be exploited where the offence alleged carries a higher penalty than that above (e.g. dangerous driving). The penalty for failing to provide should match that of the offence allegedly committed by the driver.
An example is this case: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-35472617. A driver deliberately hit a cyclist and drive off. There were two possible drivers and they simply refused to say who was driving. This is not uncommon but it is effectively The penalty was 6pts and £150. If the s172 penalty matched the index offence then witholding driver details would cease to be an attractive option. Alternatively, s172 could carry custody where it is wilfully committed."
Signed Dan S' one also
This should go back to court. If the pair continue to refuse to identify the driver the Police and CPS have one obvious option; upgrade the offense to Assault and charge them both under Joint Enterprise.
Maximum penalty for fail to identify the driver can include your licence being endorsed with 6 penalty points and a fine up of £1,000. A £150 seems pathetic and I would appeal!
Volvo xc90 , the lease hire car of choice of high ranking Nottinghamshire Police officials ( alledgedley!!!!)
Chaps, just spread the word of the petition that Dan S did (to replace my lowly effort! - which has 21 signatures!). Get it on all the cycling forums, Facebook, Twitter, lamposts etc... All this rhetoric is pushing on open doors!
MODERATORS: If you are lurking, can you make the petition more public please?
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/120623/
Cheers, ta.
The company I work for has several pool cars for work use, belonging to Avis that we control ourselves. Any employee (over 21 or something like that) with a licence can drive . we sign them out and take the key....however, it may come as no surprise that on a daily basis some takes the key directly from the last person because they are late or can't be bothered with the paperwork. Maybe because, so far, there has been nothing serious that happened, we have not considered the lack of recoded traceability.
Lets hope this is resolved.
As an additional question on this thread, given that the legalities are very constraining, would there be any change in the outcome if the chap on his bike had been killed? Would the CPS settle for 6 pts in this case?
Yes, Dan S, you have been very clear and informative, I just wanted to get some context on the severity of the situation impacting the expected response. I completely accept that the CPS are bound by existing law.
I guess the issue would have come down to the effort made available to cover the extra dilligence in order to come to a suitable outcome in the case. Given that nobody died, they may feel that the effort was commensurate, but, if he had died, they may have invested much more police time in phorensics and the like.
I seem to remember that criminal deaths/murders cost the state in excess of £1m each in admin/investigation, so this would make sense.
Sorry, getting grouchy and didn't check who the question was from!
Unless I've missed something surely both the man and woman are both guilty of failing to report? Whoever was in the car at the time has the duty to report - even passengers.
You've missed two thing
1. There is no indication that both were in the car, only that both were allowed to drive it and we don't know which was doing so. The other may have been the passenger or may have been elsewhere.
2. Section 170 of the Road Traffic Act only requires the driver to stop and report an accident, not the passengers.
No lawyer, but if only two people could have been driving, and they both collude to hide the identity of the driver, then could there be an offence of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice being committed?
Yes there could. But there isn't enough information in the article to say whether there actually has been. It might be that they are each blaming each other, in which case it's hard to say that they're conspiring together.
Absolutely shocking, the whole saga and certainly the delibrate act of hit n run criminal collision.
Utterly scandalous that cops did NOT treat it as ATTEMPTED MURDER, and worse, that they found it that DIFFICULT to confirm the culprit behind the wheel, when all they needed to know if it was male or female.
>And that they easily could have established who it was by:
1. Checking out their alibis
2. Checking mobile phone data of their movements
3. Locating eye witnesses, whose cars were captured on victim's cameras, who may have spotted the fleeing suspect
4. Tracked cctv movement of the culprit's car, b4 n after the collision, and potentially revealing the driver
>Having failed all these leads, all within their power n resources, makes you wonder if cops willfully withheld it from the public and the press, perhaps because the culprit had some connections with cops.
Signed!
Can those good people that signed mine, please sign the new one from Dan S please?
Nope. If anything that's worse. The case would be self contradictory. The passenger, if passenger there was, would not be guilty. So you would be putting two people in the dock and saying "one of these people is innocent and one is guilty. We don't know which is which.". The jury (or magistrates) would have to be sure which was the driver. That's hardly likely when the prosecution case is that they don't know which is...
How would you do that? There is no power for the prosecution to appeal a lawful but unduly lenient sentence from the magistrates' court.
That's fairly common and it can be a useful illustration of the process. The registered keeper (either Avis or the company) gets the s172 notice. If it's Avis then they provide the company's details and the company is sent a s172 notice. The company either simply checks the records and provides the details of the person who signed it out or they speak to that person.
If the company speak to the person who signed it out and there's a dispute between two people as to who was driving then the company will probably have to accept that they are unable to provide the details. They can then try to argue that they've used due diligence to find out but they'll almost certainly fail and be fined. I would imagine that the people breakign the rules would hear more about that in the morning.
If the company provides the details of the person who signed it out then they in turn get a s172 notice. They probably supply details of the person who took it from them. When that person gets their notice they return it saying the other guy. By this stage the process has been going on for weeks and almost all private companies would have recorded over their CCTV and people may genuinely not remember who was driving at a particular time. THe outcome might be that the guy who signed it out is charged and has to try to argue that it wasn't him and he has provided the details or it might be that nobody is charged.
The one time I ever saw the due diligence defence work it was a couple who were moving house. They made literally dozens of trips each between the two houses on that day, with each driving while the other was packing or unpacking. Weeks later they had no way of saying who was driving when they went through a speed camera doing about 47 in a 40. It takes that kind of situation usually. And companies get very little slack, because they should have systems in place.
The first point, which I really did think I had made tolerably clear by now, is that the CPS are not settling for 6 points. At no point in this process did a CPS lawyer say "oh well, it's just a cyclist being injured, 6 points will be fine". The CPS simply have to work within a system of laws that includes such things as the presumption of innocence.
As to the question, it is difficult to answer without knowing exactly what was said by the two people in their interviews, along with a number of other factors. In general, the fact that a perosn is killed is likely to mean that the investigation will have more resources than a serious injury. This is not a cue for people to scream about not protecting cyclists. The same is true in all kinds of assaults. If you kill somebody with a knife then the police will allocate more resources than if you injure them. The police have limited resources (as do the CPS, although that probably wouldn't have any effect here) and yes, they will prioritise death cases. The resources are such that I regularly come across robbery, drug dealing and serious assault cases where there are investigations that could have been done but weren't because there simply aren't the resources. That's not the police's fault, nor is it the CPS's fault.
This does not mean that more could have been achieved. There are various kinds of investigation that could be tried: mobile phone cell site evidence; fingerprints and DNA from the steering wheel; extensive CCTV searches across the city to try to find somebody getting in or out of the car etc. We do not know which, if any, of these were tried. Anybody complaining that the police didn't do these things either needs to be quiet or say how they know they weren't done. Any and all of them might have failed to establish who was driving.
The short version: had the cyclist died then the police may well have had more resources but it is entirely impossible to say whether those resources would have led to a different result. If no more evidence was obtained then yes, the same charge would have been forthcoming. That still wouldn't be the CPS settling for 6 points, it would be the CPS laying the only charge that had a realistic prospect of conviction (they are legally obliged not to lay charges that do not have such a prospect).
Joint Enterprise is a legal tool created for precisely these situations. Most often you will read about it where someone has been seriously injured by a gang or similar group, the legal system cannot identify which offender laid the blow so all are found to be equally responsible.
Joint enterprise was not created for this kind of situation. It was created for situations where two or more people act jointly (hence the name...). It covers situations where you cannot say who did what, but that is not its main purpose, as it also covers situations where you know precisely who did what. The point is simply that you can charge several people with a single offence if they all took part in it. It emphatically does not cover situations where one person did it and one didn't but you don't know which. Mere presence is not enough for joint enterprise.
Here there is no suggestion that two acted jointly to assault the cyclist. There is no evidence that this was a joint enterprise assault. Subsequent failure to help the police does not make the assault a joint enterprise.
In a joint enterprise you say to the jury that both did it. In this case you'd be saying that one did it and one didn't. That's not joint enterprise.
*duplicate post*
No offence, but I'm going to put up a differently worded one, putting it into legalese
The problem is that your suggestion has the title about making reporting mandatory. It already is. And then you say that failure to comply should be deemed as contempt. The point is to increase the penalty for the existing offence rather than to create a new offence. Much easier to get through, for one thing.
I'll draft a new one and post a link.
None taken, but there's very few characters allowed in the title.
Signed it.
OK, so I have made a UK Government Petition: If we want change we need to act:
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/120620/sponsors/BgwGd152uLDVpOE...
I need five signatures on this for it to go live. Once it does, the link can go to all the cycling forums. It's about all road users being properly protected, but this is a good place to start.
Signed
£150 fine for a hit and run ? That magistrate should be ashamed of himself. £150 is nothing.
I am a bit surprised that the pictures can't be enhanced enough to work out if it was a man or woman driving - the cyclist had a good few minutes of the car being behind him. Is there no filter that takes a bit of glare out ? (I know CSI has given us wildly optimistic views of what can be done...)
Like I said in a previous post-I did try to enhance and there's not enough there. Would never stand up in court.
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