Video: Shocking Nottingham hit and run – cyclist says driver was not prosecuted

fenix wrote:

£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...)

 

No £150 for the offence charged, failing to provide details. See the very lenghty post above. As Dan S said, too low for that, too low by far. And that sentence needs changing.

But it's not £150 for a hit and run.

bendertherobot wrote:

fenix wrote:

£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...)

 

 

No £150 for the offence charged, failing to provide details. See the very lenghty post above. As Dan S said, too low for that, too low by far. And that sentence needs changing.

But it's not £150 for a hit and run.

Point taken.  But a guy was 'hit and run' and the only financial penalty was £150.  I agree with you it needs changing.

jthef wrote:

that is horific!

I agree with the comets he put at the end of the video as well.

When I had a near miss the coppers said if it was bad they send it to the America as they have the ability to get more info from the piture.

Has this been done?

good chance with first bit of piture.

Hope he is fit and well again.

Wot?

Zebulebu wrote:

jthef wrote:

that is horific!

I agree with the comets he put at the end of the video as well.

When I had a near miss the coppers said if it was bad they send it to the America as they have the ability to get more info from the piture.

Has this been done?

good chance with first bit of piture.

Hope he is fit and well again.

Wot?

I think he was asking if the picture of the Volvo could be enhanced. I actually did try this with Photoshop tools, but although I could make out a vague shape of a head, it was nowhere near good enough to make a positive ID.

Rapha Nadal wrote:

The police not being able to trace the driver is the lamest excuse known to man.  Esepcially as it takes a 2 second search of the MID and a call to the garage.  Half arsed policing in full effect. Twats.

And how do you prove which of the two people registered to drive it was actually driving?  

Dan S wrote:

A moment's search on Google reveals what happened : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-35472617.

Basically it's as anybody with knowledge of the law would assume:

1. It's a hire car. 

2. The police did what they should have done and served a s172 notice, requiring the hire company to tell them who hired it.

3. The car had been hired out to a man but with two permitted drivers: him and a female.  They were also served with s172 notices requiring them to say which had been driving.

4. They declined to say who had been driving.  This is obviously extremely reprehensible.  Note that at this point the fact of its being a hire car becomes irrelevant.  It is exactly the same situation as if my car hits somebody (or just goes througha red light/speed camera) and my wife and I refuse to say which of us was driving.

5. A few people have said that the failure to find out who it was shows that the police either don't care or are incompetent.  This is simply wrong.  It is conceivable (likely, in fact) that the car went outside the view of CCTV.  In any event the police would not have gone to CCTV until it became apparent that the car was a hire and the hirer wasn't complying.  Doing so would have been a complete waste of resources as most people do comply.  By the time they got that far it is likely that any CCTV other than city council would have been wiped - most provate companies keep their CCTV for short periods only, to save space.  You can only check out an alibi if they give one - they may not have done so.  

6. The same goes for mobile phone positioning, with the added complication that it is very difficult and very expensive to do a precise triangulation of mobile phone position.  The bit that can be done relatively easily is call data.  That just shows you which cells were used and this is not sufficient to say exactly where you were (it can be a range of several kilometers).  It also only works if you are actually using your phone at the time.  Anything beyond that rough position requires very time-consuming and expensive work.  By which I mean that police resources are such that it is very rare to get it in cases like organised burglary and drug dealing gangs.  This does not mean that the police don't care about this case or about cycling generally.  It means that they do not have infinite resources.  Add complications like showing who had which phone at the time (basically impossible in some cases) and the decision not to go down that route is entirely right.

7. Both were summonsed for failing to stop, failing to report and failing to respond to their s172 notices.  The CPS (rightly) took the view that there was no prospect of conviction on the failing to stop and failing to report for exactly the same reason that there is no prospect of a conviction for dangerous driving: it is impossible to identify the driver.  This, by the way, is not the CPS being incompetent of uncaring or a bunch of car drivers who cyclists.  It's the CPS applying the law.  

8. The male (presumably it was he who hired the car) was convicted of failing to answer the s172 notice.  The female doesn't appear to have been convicted, which makes sense - she would only be lawfully required to reply if she was the driver.  Since we would only have the male's word for that, she wouldn't be convicted (the Prosecution not being able to rely on a Defendant's word in their case).

9. The male was fined £150.  This is shockingly low.  The maximum is £1000.  This low fine is not the fault of the police or the CPS.  It is a decision taken my magistrates.  They have sentencing guidelines that they have to pay heed to but are free to excedd in appropriate case.  Personally I would have thought that this justified a higher fine but I (like everybody else here) don't know the details of what led to the decision, so cannot say for certain.

10. The male received 6 penalty points.  This is the maximum penalty in terms of driving punishment.  The fact that this is the maximum is not the fault of the police, CPS or Magistrates.  It is the fault of the Parliament of 1988 that passed the Road Traffic Act and of every Parliament since that has not increased it.

11. Personally I feel that the penalty for willfully failing to provide details should be the same as the penalty for whatever offence the unidentified driver committed.  It isn't.  If those who are talking about writing to MPs want to put something useful in their letters, leave aside calls for expensive infrastructure and education that will probably be ignored.  Write and suggest an amendment to make wilfully failing to supply driver details punishable with the same penalty as the offence that the driver committed.  That's the actual lesson from this case.

This is not a case, as far as the reports show, where the police have been lazy, incompetent or uncaring about cyclists.  Nor have the CPS.  The only reprehensible behaviour has been by the driver and possibly by the other eligible driver (I say possibly because it may be that each said it was the other, in which case the non-driver has done nothing wrong).  And possibly the court sentenced too low but really would a £1000 fine have reduced the justifiable sense of injustice here?

It is also a case that highlights a problem with the current legislation.  That is not something that can be fixed by the police, the CPS or the courts.  It needs a Bill in Parliament.

 

Excellent post. Particularly 11. 

Dan S wrote:

A moment's search on Google reveals what happened : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-35472617.

 

11. Personally I feel that the penalty for willfully failing to provide details should be the same as the penalty for whatever offence the unidentified driver committed.  It isn't.  If those who are talking about writing to MPs want to put something useful in their letters, leave aside calls for expensive infrastructure and education that will probably be ignored.  Write and suggest an amendment to make wilfully failing to supply driver details punishable with the same penalty as the offence that the driver committed.  That's the actual lesson from this case.

 

 

Totally agree with point 11. We all love the lazy social media comment (guilty here as well) but this is a well thought out response. MP's and cycle groups should lobby parliament on this. It won't make the roads any safer, but it will at least make people accountable.

Maybe we should set up one of those online gov petitions?

Dan S wrote:

A moment's search on Google reveals what happened...

Dan, thank you for the very helpful explanation.  I had my reply fully formed in my head until I got to your point 11 and discovered you had beaten me to it.

Of course the penalty for willfully witholding information after an offence should be the same penalty as the offence itself would have required.  In fact it should be worse - now someone has been driven into *and* there has been an attempt to cover up the details.  A higher penalty might encourage people to tell the truth.

But now the trouble is that we can't blame any individual (or group), no-one can be singled out and ranted at.  The fault lies at an insitutional level, with our national legislation (which we know is hopelessly lenient towards drivers).  And any change is unlikely to happen, regardless of what each of us does individually.  How many times have I written to my (Labour) MP, and he's replied to say that, essentially he agrees but there's very little he can do about it under the circumstances.

Maybe I will just move to the Netherlands.  Hopefully the momentum of these articles will take this somewhere.  Good luck with that petition.

Jonomc wrote:

Publish the details of the people who could not be prosecuted and the rest will sort itself out.

Not that I condone the lynch mob for one moment, but it is certainly odd that nobody has been named.

Jonomc wrote:

Publish the details of the people who could not be prosecuted and the rest will sort itself out.

Who should publish those details? The law is at fault here - let's not make it worse by suggesting that other offences be committed to encourage vigilantism.

What needs to happen is shit like this being made more public until enough people get sick of it that the law (or more specifically the way it is applied) is changed

OldnSlo wrote:

Nothing academic abou it at all.  Police have a duty to investigate and they would appear to be negligent.  So pursue the police via the IPCC and the CPS for failure to process.  The courtesy/hire car loophole needs closing.

Neither the police nor the CPS can close legal loopholes.  Complaining about them won't mean that they can.  And no, the police do not appear to have been negligent.

Mungecrundle wrote:

I bet the driver would have been identified soon enough had a parking ticket been involved.

No, almost certainly not.  The registered keeper is responsible for any parking fines incurred by the car, regardless of who was driving.  So there is no need to identify the driver.  Whether a similar system should apply here is a different question...

ron611087 wrote:

The cyclist who posted the video commented "Despite the evidence, the police and CPS failed to bring the driver in this savage attack to justice".

Perhaps I'm reading too much into that comment but I don't think CPS would have been involved unless the driver had been identified.

If that's the case, then why would the CPS not prosecute?

I agree it sounds like the driver was identified by the registered vehicle owning company, but in the only evidence of the crash that was sourced, ie the cyclists video, there was no way to confirm it was the same person, you cant see who the driver is behind the windscreen.

Which must be the legal loophole for a loan/courtesty car situation as the registered owner has met their legal obligations side, so cant be prosecuted for witholding that info, but the law doesnt then cover the situation that says what happens if that driver then doesnt admit to anything happening and cannot be identified from the video evidence.

normally its not an issue because there would be other angles from other CCTV videos,or speed camera footage which could be used to positively confirm the driver matched.