A driver has been sentenced to seven months in jail, suspended for a year, after admitting causing the death of a cyclist by careless driving near Brighouse. Philip Roper hit and killed William Stoker, who was cycling in the opposite direction, while overtaking another car on January 14 last year.
The Huddersfield Daily Examiner reports that Roper had been travelling along the A6025 behind a BMW which had moved to overtake a slower moving Kia.
Roper, driving a Citroen C5, had also moved to overtake and while prosecutor Stephen Wood said that the road was theoretically wide enough to allow the manoeuvre and leave enough space for an on-coming cyclist, this depended upon the position of the vehicles.
“This collision occurred when the defendant pulled out further into the offside than the BMW and collided with Mr Stoker, who was there to be seen,” said Wood, who said the cyclist had been wearing a red high-vis jacket.
Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said Roper should have waited before making the manoeuvre.
“You should have waited,” he said. “By the time you saw the cyclist, if you saw him at all, it was too late.”
Roper had been due to stand trial on the charge, but entered a guilty plea last week. Tom Gent, representing him, said that his client was “utterly shattered” by what had happened and was still unable to sleep properly.
The court heard that the guideline given to judges in cases of “momentary inattention” causing death was a low-level to high-level community order.
As well as the suspended sentence, Roper was banned from driving for two years and made subject to a five-month electronically-monitored home curfew.
Durham Hall conceded that the sentence would not satisfy the victim’s family or many of the public.
54 thoughts on “Suspended sentence for Yorkshire driver who killed oncoming cyclist while overtaking”
Quote:
Damn right!
“was still unable to sleep
“was still unable to sleep properly”
Shit, let’s hope he manages to sort that now that he knows he’s not going to prison…
PaulBox wrote:
Ok, I get it. It really is truly awful that someone has died needlessly. It should never have happened, but it has. But, please do tell me, what benefit to anyone is gained from sending this person to prison? It almost certainly has ruined the driver’s life, as well as numerous others. He will almost certainly never do this again. So what gain is there in inprisoning him?
So, let’s send him to prison. The average cost to the taxpayer per new prisoner is £119,000 plus £40,000 per year per prisoner. So yes, let’s send him to prison and cost the tax payer the best part of a quarter of a million pounds. It doesn’t bring the cyclist back, his family and friends won’t feel any better, he won’t be rehabilitated any better or quicker (he doesn’t need any), but the taxpayer is worse off and the Road.cc readers are happy. Well done.
No, prison is not the answer in 99% of these cases. Education and rehabilitation is. Surely a better sentence is to force this man to become a driving tutur or public role model for improved driving?
Nothing anyone does will ever fill the gap that this cyclist’s death has left. Ever. But prison is not the answer, despite what appears to be a desire amongst Road.cc readers to fill prisons with drivers and then complain there is no money left from public purses to fund better roads and infrastructure…
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
Think you’d be coming out with the same appeasing sentiments if it was your child or partner you had to go and visit at the mortuary to identify their corpse?
No,thought not.
Grumpy17 wrote:
No, i probably wouldn’t. But that’s the exact reason why those emotionally involved with the situation do not have a say over the sentencing. If it were me I would want him executed. Doesn’t make it right though, does it?
So you’ve actually just made my point for me. So thank you.
And it’s not appeasement. Not at all. It would be appeasement if the judge had read this website and decided to sentence the driver to 30 years in prison to keep the baying mob happy. That’s appeasement. This is an analysis of the reasoning behind a sentence in a way that derives most benefit to society whilst also trying, in some way, to recognise the loss suffered by the victim’s loved ones.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
Yeah. British justice always hits that sweet spot for everyone involved.
Very heartwarming to see.
Grumpy17 wrote:
Where did I say it did? Please, tell me.
Any sentencing is a compromise. It’s a balancing act between the desire for punishment arising from those affected, the cost of such punishment, the value to society in punishment, the value to society in rehabilitation and prevailing scoial opinions at the time. It’s imperfect, but I would much rather have the wonderful system we have than one like in Russia, or China, where people are imprisoned, for life, for certain crimes that don’t warrant such a punishment.
We live in a society and world where money is placed at a higher value than human life. I don’t like it, but it’s true. That’s why sentencing is the way it is and it will never change. It doesn’t make it right, and that’s not what I’m saying, but it is the truth. If you can’t accept that, that is not my problem.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
The point of the sentencing is one of deterrence. If the punishment is too lenient then there is no incentive to other people to maintain a high standard of competence. If you drive a car, then you have taken on a level of responsibilty to the other road users. The courts need to give a clear portrayal of the consequence of driving without that level of care. The benefit to society is in ensuring other people don’t drive as badly. This sentence doesn’t send that message.
dmack wrote:
Indeed. And a two year driving ban is just offensively short.
A custodial sentence should be the default answer to driving while banned though.
Grumpy17 wrote:
The problem with the many verdicts that are like this is motorists can act effectively act with impunity when it comes to driving in a fit and proper way. Both the law and the legal system are not funtioning effectively – which act as a deterrent to those who because of impatience, risk the lives of you, me and most other people who read this website.
Whilst retribution would not be the right motivation for a custodial sentence in this case, the concept of being responsible for ones actions is – and that is where we are all being let down right now.
scouser_andy wrote:
I don’t disagree but tend to look at it a different way. This is an education problem. If drivers were better trained and better educated as to how to drive and deal with cyclists then it would be easier to arm the law with “punishments” for transgressions as they would be rarer and, as such, more serious. It’s entirely a prevention point. Punishing someone for something that has already happened is closing the door after the horse has bolted.
Prevention is pro-active and friendly and benefical to absolutely everyone. There are no down sides. Punishment is reactive, draconian and beneficial to no one. There are no up sides.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
I disagree. Education is over-rated as a cure for all ills (I often argue with a liberal friend who sees it as the answer to all problems of inequality and declining social mobility, for example).
Maybe it’s so often over-rated because those who make the arguments have had a lot of it themselves! It just seems to get used as an excuse for not really doing anything (cf the ‘courses’ drivers can go on as an alternative to fines, which don’t seem to achieve anything at all, or the posters telling people to get more exercise. etc).
I would favour physical, material changes to the world and to the incentives and costs people are presented with, over giving someone lectures that won’t make any difference to anything.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
Idealistic drivel.
Too many impatient,incompetent,dangerous morons sharing our roads with us. Very few of ’em interested in being ‘educated’ how to drive more safely. They will always drive like cnuts no matter how hard you think you can ‘prevent’ it.
Punishment helps society because it stops them from getting back behind the wheel and wrecking more lives.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
It’s to act as a deterrent. Currently there is minimal deterrent to killing a cyclist.
You think putting someone in prison for a few years is expensive? Killing and maiming is expensive too. How much tax do these dead people pay versus when they’re alive? How long are they dead for? How much does it cost to treat, rehabilitate and care for a victim of a life-changing injury?
If people knew they’d get a 14 year sentence for this shit they’d think twice before overtaking an already overtaking car.
danthomascyclist wrote:
I don’t want to live in a society where the threat of imprisonment is a deterrent. That’s what happens in the likes of Russia and China. The purpose of prison is a mixture of punishment, rehabilitation and protection of the public at large. I welcome you to point me to any official UK government guidance that states that one of the purposes. There are lots of studies that show that prison may act as a detterent for serial offenders.
And you really think the driver thought about that when he was completing the manouvre? You really think he completing some form of reasoning along the lines of
“oh, let’s overtake, oh, there’s a cyclist, what happens if I hit him? Well, I could go to prison but, let’s be honest, the UK’s soft on that stuff so it’ll be fine, what’s the worst that can happen? Let’s go for it”.
Nope, it was a momentary, careless, tragic, lapse of judgement that even if the end result would have been his execution, would not have stopped it from happening.
There’s a reason why I don’t tend to post on these cycling websites, this has reminded why.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
Is it because you’re Jeremy Corbyn and most normal people think you talk out of your pooper?
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
And I don’t much like living in a society where the judicial system gives a lower sentence for having a careless approach to driving, and killing someone as a result, than it does to someone who steals a bottle of water from a shop during a riot, or who rips off a life-insurance company.
But careless lapses of judgement happen all the time on the roads, and one reason is that many drivers habitually adopt low standards of care. Largely because they know it won’t be them who pays the price.
These things are not exclusively ‘single mistakes’ they are usually a consequence of a choice as to how much care to habitually take. And that choice is made in the context of what the penalties are for screwing up. Most of these guys _are_ serial offenders, they just have gotten away with their carelessness before.
Do you really think if all cyclists were carrying nitroglycerine and would explode with car-destroying force if so much as lightly tapped, SMIDSY would be as common?
Despite all that I actually agree with you (a bit more than everyone else seems to). In that I think punishment won’t really solve the problem and prevention is far preferable. But I don’t think ‘education’ is the right form of prevention. Doing far more to control where cars can go and who can use them is a better way to achieve that.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
These sort of ‘never send anyone to prison’ arguments are fair-enough in themselves (honestly, I accept that they are), but I would say they are inappropriate on a story where the issue is not prison as such, but the differentially-lenient treatments of certain kinds of crime.
Why not go and post on those cases (e.g. manslaughter or murder cases not involving cars) where the culprit has actually been sent to prison? Go argue about those cases first, then, when you’ve gotten prison sentences abolished for them, get back to us.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
I don’t think you understand how this shit works… Apart from having a good moral compass, what stops you from stealing something? Or hitting somebody who really p!sses you off, or even worse, shooting somebody who hurts a member of your family?
It might be the consequences of taking those actions.
That is what prison sentences are for, they don’t bring back murdered people or replace stolen items, they prevent normal people from doing the bad things in the first place.
So, £0.25m to make some other prick think twice about endangering my life the next time he fancies overtaking while I’m cycling in the opposite direction is £0.25m well spent!
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
Pour encourager les autres. To save lives. To provide justice.
We can have this:
“Pay attention while you are driving because if you kill someone whilst pulling some dodgy overtake you will go to prison for it. Here’s the proof “
or this:
“There’s no way you’ll go to jail for killing people on the road no matter how reckless your driving.”
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
the point is two fold…punishment and deterence.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
If there are no/low consequences for willfully driving poorly, then there is little incentive to drive well, which results in more events (which when involving a cyclist, result in the cyclist coming off worse every time).
Whilst I agree that sending a mostly law abiding citizen to jail may be more servere than sending a ”career criminal” to jail, the courts don’t seem eager/allowed to utilize other measures. In this case, the suspension of the sentence could have been ten years, and the driving ban for five. It blows me away that this driver will be able to live a normal life except for not driving for half a year, and be completely in the clear in two years. Maybe even make the suspended sentence for life years, so the drivers knows that they have to lead a perfectly clean life from now on.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
Out of interest, what “education” did you have in mind? Do you really believe that a man who has, presumably, passed a driving test doesn’t know that what he did was wrong? That he didn’t, indeed, know before he did it that it was a stupid risk?
I couldn’t personally care less what happens to this loon – I hope he never drives again, and I hope his conscience will ensure that end. But it matters in general that such idiotic behaviour is seen to have bad consequences, because nothing else will induce thinking in the next nuttter in line. Both ends could be achieved quite cheaply, but I guess that ways lies what you wouldcall barbarism. Quite what you call the bullying savagery of many drivers is unclear. Normal, I fear.
lbmxj560vr46 wrote:
absolutely right, just shoot the fucker, costs about £2
No fuck at all given by the
No fuck at all given by the courts.
My advice, cycle with your D lock around handle bars, prepare to grab and smash any car windows if they pass too close.
How is it “momentary
How is it “momentary inattention” if you’re in the middle of an overtake? Surely that should be a moment of maximum attention.
Hopefully he sorts his sleep
Hopefully he sorts his sleep issues out, poor lamb. The judge probably took into account all the “sleep” the cyclist now gets when just about rewarding the driver for clearing the road of 2 wheeled menaces.
Wow a tag for a home curfew,
Wow a tag for a home curfew, this judge really threw the book at him.
There’s a joke somewhere in
There’s a joke somewhere in this story……..it’s the law.
“momentary inattention” or
“momentary inattention” or “continual mollycoddled disinterest”?
Now that we’re at the point where phrases such as “I don’t remember it” and “I couldn’t see where I was going” are classed and used as mitigating circumstances, rather than damning indictments why would anyone ever bother paying attention?!
You’re pretty safe in your airbag filled metal box and the insurance will buy you a shiny new one if you mess up, so you might as well concentrate on something more interesting than the people around you while you’re sat behind the wheel, eh!
So let’s imagine the victim
So let’s imagine the victim was not a cyclist but a pedstrian.
Let’s suppose the driver’s inattention was such that during his ill-timed manoeuvre he killed a pedestrian who was standing in the road waiting to cross.
Would the verdict have been different?
Yes, I somehow think it would have been.
The court would have convicted him of death by dangerous driving.
Why ? Because the pedestrian is afforded some kind of blameless status compared to a cyclist . The cyclist, in the eyes of the non-cycling public,is by nature foolish and risk-taking because he or she makes the clear choice to commit to riding a bike on public roads so must accept all the dangers which that brings with it.
No wonder it’s a war out there.
Grumpy17 wrote:
It’s no war, it’s one sided slaughter.
ktache wrote:
One cyclist fatality per 3 billion motor miles travelled.
Not great but not slaughter.
Duncann wrote:
Whilst your stats may be true, the issue we have is that the sentencing when it does happen, is purely inadequate. It was only recently that Ms Purcell walked away from mowing down a cyclists directly in front of her car. Had that been a pedestrian then you can be certain she would have faced a stiffer sentence.
Therefore in the eyes of the courts, cyclists are fair game!
jigr69 wrote:
I made no comment on sentencing; merely responded to the slaughter point.
driving on the wrong side of
driving on the wrong side of the road against oncoming traffic when you cant really see whats coming up because someone else is also overataking on the wrong side of the road immediately ahead of u…. then hitting and killing the opposite direction road user who you couldnt see….wow…..it almost sounds dangerous doesnt it? in fact the dictionary definition of dangerous is amongst others
“able or likely to cause physical injury”
” hazardous, unsafe, risky”
For proffessions that rely very strongly on precise vocabulary/wording its a shame the courts, lawyers etc. cant recognise a simple dictionary definition of something in a criminal charge. Bizarre.
the nutcracker wrote:
and yet we all know a jury including 5-6 below average drivers would have a quite him.
I’m not sure prison is the answer perhaps community service of speaking about the event at driver awareness courses coupled with a 5 year driving ban.
get the message out that driving like this has consequences.
Jail for those who deny wrongdoing and are miraculously convicted by jury.
wycombewheeler wrote:
driving on the wrong side of the road against oncoming traffic when you cant really see whats coming up because someone else is also overataking on the wrong side of the road immediately ahead of u…. then hitting and killing the opposite direction road user who you couldnt see….wow…..it almost sounds dangerous doesnt it? in fact the dictionary definition of dangerous is amongst others
“able or likely to cause physical injury”
” hazardous, unsafe, risky”
For proffessions that rely very strongly on precise vocabulary/wording its a shame the courts, lawyers etc. cant recognise a simple dictionary definition of something in a criminal charge. Bizarre.
— wycombewheeler and yet we all know a jury including 5-6 below average drivers would have a quite him. I’m not sure prison is the answer perhaps community service of speaking about the event at driver awareness courses coupled with a 5 year driving ban. get the message out that driving like this has consequences. Jail for those who deny wrongdoing and are miraculously convicted by jury.— the nutcracker
Trouble with that is that for this scumbag it has no consequences whatever. He killed a man because of his own, deliberate, dangerous actions and walked away essentially unpunished.
Forget the Cyclist Defense
And they say Yorkshire men are tough! Lilly-livered judge!
There is every need for
There is every need for courts to impose sentences that reflect the severity of the offense with due regard to the consequences of actions. I do want to live in a society where people are held accountable when their action or negligence harms others. More so where that harm involves death or serious injury. Prison sentences are there to deter similar behaviour in others and to make clear the values and expectations that society places on individuals and on their responsibility for safeguarding others.
There is a persistent soft treatment of people when their offence involves use (misuse) of a motor vehicle. Accidentally kill someone with a single unfortunate punch in a spontaneous Saturday night street brawl moment of alcohol inspired stupidity and you will face a manslaughter charge. Get in a car and kill someone after many miles of reckless driving and aggression and you will almost be considered just one of the victims of the “accident”.
A lot of money was recently raised for a private prosecution of a motorist who killed another road user, a cyclist as it happens. The case was in court for a few hours before being thrown out. I cannot help but think that the tens of £thousands raised might have been better used setting up a fund to support anyone caught and prosecuted for setting fire to the current cars of unrepetent killer drivers.
I don’t want to live in a
I don’t want to live in a society where the threat of imprisonment is a deterrent.
You prefer to live in a society where one person can culpably kill another, and there are effectively no consequences for the killer? It’s a very strange point of view. The threat of a sanction affects people’s behaviour in all sorts of situations, and it’s clearly necessary here to stop innocent lives being ended.
There’s a reason why I don’t tend to post on these cycling websites, this has reminded why.
You come on here with a point of view which you know is going to be unpopular, and which objectively is pretty indefensible, then you get in a huff when other people disagree with you. You might take a moment to consider if the fault really lies with the other commenters, or closer to home.
I think the idea of not using
I think the idea of not using sentencing as a deterrent tool, but it is ignoring the fact that at the heart of it, we are all basically savages waiting to get out.
By and large, we do what we believe we will get away with. OK, we all have a moral compass in there somewhere, but the truth is its the fear of getting caught that keeps us in check.
Look at mobile phone use whilst driving. A signficant proportion carry on because it doesn’t hit their moral compass, and they know they are unlikely to get caught in the act.
Look at speeding on the roads… it all carries on because we know we won’t get caught, or if we do, the punishment will be minimal.
Look at murder… very few of us do that. Why? Well I’d be an idiot to deny that most peoples moral compass will be flashing on this one, but equally;
– the punishment for killing (other than whilst driving a car) is severe
– A lot of effort goes in to catching those that have committed murder
Of course sentencing is a deterrent on a wider social level.
For me, this was dangerous driving.
He deliberately chose to enter the opposite lane. It was a conscious decision. He also chose to complete this action whilst his vision of oncoming traffic was impaired by the car infront.
He knowingly drove in a way that was, by its very nature, dangerous.
That to me is not careless.
I understand that the CPS would accept a guilty plea on death by careless driving as I am sure there are enough potential jurors out there that may have also knowlingly taken such a dangerous risk, that the conviction was unlikely.
However, I’d suggest the severity of the event was enough to get a more serious punishment.
It’s was not “momentary
It’s was not “momentary inattention”. It was a bad decision. The Highway Code says in Rule 163 You should “not assume that you can simply follow a vehicle ahead which is overtaking; there may only be enough room for one vehicle.”
bike.brain wrote:
It was more than bad, it was dangerous.
He was trying to overtake a car that was already trying to overtake the Ka.
And the judge tries to make out that it was the best sentence available?
Butty wrote:
That’s not the way I read it, I read it that he was trying to overtake the ka behind another car (BMW) but giving more space between him and the car he was overtaking than the BMW did.
ClubSmed wrote:
It was more than bad, it was dangerous.
He was trying to overtake a car that was already trying to overtake the Ka.
And the judge tries to make out that it was the best sentence available?
— Butty That’s not the way I read it, I read it that he was trying to overtake the ka behind another car (BMW) but giving more space between him and the car he was overtaking than the BMW did.— bike.brain
The Huddersfield paper makes it clearer.
The BMW was overtaking the Ka, but this POS was positioned even further out to overtake the BMW, so all three cars were occupying the entire width of the road and the cyclist had nowhere to go.
Bradford Crown Court heard how Roper had been travelling behind a BMW which was trying to overtake a slower moving Kia car and Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said the defendant should have waited before making the manoeuvre.
Mr Stoker was able to ride past the on-coming BMW, but he was hit by the Citroen which had pulled out further.
Prosecutor Stephen Wood told the court that although the A6025 road was theoretically wide enough to allow the overtaking manoeuvre and leave enough space for an on-coming cyclist, in reality it depended upon the position of the vehicles.
“This collision occurred when the defendant pulled out further into the offside than the BMW and collided with Mr Stoker, who was there to be seen,” said Mr Wood.“
I can’t see how this is careless, it is a deliberate attempt to carry out a highly dangerous action.
I fail to see why even the prosecutor said that there was room for three abreast. That would have been more like some kind of pathetic mitigation offered by the defence.
Quote:
That sounds like what I’ve often heard when going through a single lane chicane with a central reservation so cars cannot overtake properly (North Somerset side of the Clifton Suspension Bridge for those who know it): “There was plenty of room for me to get past if only you’d moved over against the kerb you selfish so-and-so!”
Butty wrote:
I’ve just read the report on the Huddersfield Examiner and it still reads to me that he was not trying to overtake the BMW. It reads that the BMW overtook the Kia in a close pass scinario because of the awareness of the oncoming bike. Roper being unaware of the oncoming bike made the same manouvre following the BMW but gave the Kia a wider pass. Looking at the pictures on the papers report there is definately not enough room for cars to fit 3 abreast so I very much doubt that Roper was trying to overtake the BMW or that the prosecuter said that there was room for 3 cars abreast. It’s more likely that the prosecuter was saying that there is theoretically room for 2 cars and a bike abreast.
Just my interpretation though, I wasn’t there or in the court.
bike.brain wrote:
Forgive my ignorance, and this is a genuine question, but is this a “should” rule like the helmet rule?
So he is not punished, he can
So he is not punished, he can drive legally again in 2 years’ time, and there’s no apparent attempt to retrain him to drive properly. Why do we have courts at all for drivers, why not just accept that they are above the law?
The pass was dubious for the
The pass was dubious for the BMW, as there was oncoming traffic…
The offender assumed that the road ahead was clear and willfully went for the pass without vision of the road ahead.
I bet he probably thought to himself ‘that BMW is overtaking close to teh KA’, I’ll give him more room. BANG
What governs people’s actions
What governs people’s actions is mostly the culture that surrounds them (bar the odd sociopath).
The law is supposed to be codifying the rules that society at large thinks should set the boundaries for acceptable behaviour. The penalties that result from breaking the rules should be the ones that society at large thinks appropriate. When that breaks down, for example when juries refuse to convict for obvious rule breaking, we get the situation we have now with driving in a way that results in death and serious injury to a particular group having limited consequences.
What we need is a change in culture, together with stringent enforcement of the current rules. It worked with drink driving, that used to be socially acceptable 10-15 years ago, it’s not now. Regardless of whether prison ‘works’, and I don’t personally think it works well, if you want to change the prevailing culture it’s not enough to simply hope that public information films will do the job.
Significant consequences, reduced tolerance and powerful communication of the message that killing people while driving is not socially acceptable is the way forward
IMHO.
Yet merely threatening to
Yet merely threatening to kill your MP. 4 months!
Seems like an incredibly
Seems like an incredibly harsh sentence really, when all he had to do was say he didn’t know why he’d done it.
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/crime/driver-melanie-last-passes-heartfelt-sympathy-to-william-s-plewman-s-family-after-she-is-cleared-of-causing-his-death-on-a146-near-thurton-1-4950102
Truly, a driving licence is a licence to kill. With impuity. Should all driving licences start with 00?