Van driver who crushed bike with toddler still in child seat receives community order

Lukas wrote:

If I see a scaff truck I am very cautious. They are driven by thugs. 

I had a scaffold truck deliberately try to run me over in Ramsbottom. I know it was deliberate as the passenger was grinning like a dull twat, flicking the Vs at me.

If they had brains, they wouldn't be scaffolders.

kil0ran wrote:

Personally I'm not too bothered whether this behaviour results in jail time but what it should mean is a very long, properly enforced ban. Whereby the ban is a bit like a suspended sentence - if you're caught driving whilst banned then its say a mandatory 5 year sentence. So many incidents we hear about involve a disqualified driver, often in a vehicle with no MOT and insurance. 

Which always makes me laugh when the anti cycling brigade bring out the "bikes should have licence plates and be registered" argument.

We seem to have got to the stage that people feel they have the right to drive how they want at the speed thet want and all obstacles that prevent this need to be removed or punished. Then if there are consequences to this behaviour they don't want to face the music and drive off. We had another hit and run yesterday in Deal.

clayfit wrote:

Jail would gain nothing here.  If the scrot was jailed, he’d lose job, house, family, and would end up being kept by my taxes and yours.  

The ban means he’ll never be a professional driver again, but he can still get another job.

I agree that the driving ban should have been longer, with the requirement to pass an extended test.

someone wise once said that an eye for and eye makes the whole world blind.

If it was just the initial collision, I'd likely agree that prison would be harsh and I'd probably consider the length of the ban to be sufficient.

If it was just the initial collision followed by leaving the scene, I might agree that prison would be harsh, though I would consider the length of the ban to be too lenient. 

If it was the collision, leaving the scene and refusing to return then I'd probably consider prison appropriate and the length of the ban to be far too lenient.

However, considering his subsequent failure to attend six requests to be interviewed and the original court hearing, then I believe a prison sentence and a lifetime ban to be wholly necessary.

This shouldn't be seen as an eye for an eye. For that, the driver would be made to ride a bicycle with a loved one strapped to the back while someone collides with him with a multi-tonne vehicle before driving off.

There are a number of reasons why a prison sentence should be given and in this case, I would think it might serve as a deterrent to others who might consider driving when unfit to do so, fleeing the scene of an incident, failing to return to the scene of an incident, failing to attend multiple interviews and failing to attend a court hearing.

clayfit wrote:

Jail would gain nothing here.  If the scrot was jailed, he’d lose job, house, family, and would end up being kept by my taxes and yours.  

The ban means he’ll never be a professional driver again, but he can still get another job.

I agree that the driving ban should have been longer, with the requirement to pass an extended test.

someone wise once said that an eye for and eye makes the whole world blind.

Sending him to jail would send a message to all the other careless drivers out there, no?  And not sending him to jail sends the message that the state doesn't care about my wellbeing or that of any other cyclist.

So, I can't really agree with you.

This sort of liberal anti-prison stuff is one thing if it's about prison sentences in general (I'm actually happy we don't have the ultra-harsh sentences that the US does, for example,  what with that place increasingly resembling a prison system with a country appended to it), but when it's in the context of certain offences getting extra-light treatment compared to others, it carries a different message.

I also don't share your confidence that he'll 'never be a professional driver again'.  How do you figure that, given all the cases of professional drivers who have long lists of driving offences to their names yet still find employment as drivers?

e.g.

https://lcc.org.uk/articles/lorry-driver-serial-killer-of-london-cyclist...

http://road.cc/content/news/155627-freight-firm-bosses-banned-after-unli...

clayfit wrote:

 

someone wise once said that an eye for and eye makes the whole world blind.

This guy quicker than most though, and if he has no eyes he will not be able to drive*

* probably, unless he has a great lawyer...

djcritchley wrote:

Unfortunately the sentencing seems to be in accordance with the guidelines (Fail to stop/report road accident Cat 1 and Careless Driving Cat 2 ).  The difference between Dangerous and careless driving would have made little or no difference to the outcome due to the level of injury despite his complete disregard for somebody else's life.

"Apologetic Tippett told a probation officer he had not realised a child was on the bike, and he was worried about being late for work and losing his job." is not mitigation; I would like to see higher sentences for knowingly leaving the scene of an accident.

However, the judge used the language "dangerous driving" which is puzzling as to why it was just a careless driving charge.

Personally, I think that if you drive into someone and knock them over that you should stop and check that they are alright. To then drive off, crushing their bike in the process, is surely falling FAR below the standard expected by a competent and careful driver ("far" is the difference between careless and dangerous).

Also, other criteria for dangerous driving:

• Failing to have a proper and safe regard for vulnerable road users such as cyclists, motorcyclists, horse riders, the elderly and pedestrians or when in the vicinity of a pedestrian crossing, hospital, school or residential home.
• Driving when knowingly suffering from a medical or physical condition that significantly and dangerously impairs the offenders driving skills such as having an arm or leg in plaster, or impaired eyesight. It can include the failure to take prescribed medication;

hawkinspeter wrote:

Personally, I think that if you drive into someone and knock them over that you should stop and check that they are alright. To then drive off, crushing their bike in the process, is surely falling FAR below the standard expected by a competent and careful driver ("far" is the difference between careless and dangerous).

Also, other criteria for dangerous driving:

• Failing to have a proper and safe regard for vulnerable road users such as cyclists, motorcyclists, horse riders, the elderly and pedestrians or when in the vicinity of a pedestrian crossing, hospital, school or residential home.
• Driving when knowingly suffering from a medical or physical condition that significantly and dangerously impairs the offenders driving skills such as having an arm or leg in plaster, or impaired eyesight. It can include the failure to take prescribed medication;

I agree with your sentiments and would be happier if they took his licence away for min 12 months with a retest.

The sentencing guidelines mean that he would more likely have his licence suspended for careless driving.

Presumably his monocular condition was know to the DVLA otherwise the sentencing would have been more severe.

gw42 wrote:

Others (and myself) have said this many times, but the fundamental problem is that driving is clearly seen as a right to be taken away, and not a privilege that needs to be earned and kept. 

This is a view shared by most of the public, the judiciary, legislation and e.g. sentencing guidelines.

I get that prison sentences have to be covered by the criminal law and the criminal standard. What I have never understood is why the privilege of having a license to drive is not dealt with purely by the civil law. In Civil law, presumed liability is fine. It's balance of probabilities, not beyond reasonable doubt. Trying to be as objective as possible, I just don't see why life time driving bans are not a common thing given some of the very deliberate and recklessly dangerous things done by many. Proved on balance of probabilities that you chose to use a car as a weapon - lifetime ban, no questions asked. 

......

I naively hope that driverless technology may lead to a sudden wake up call that 000's of deaths a year is actually an appalling waste of life

There is a serious problem with motorised transport in our culture. Fundamentally, the car et al are highly addictive with the common side-effect of bringing out the hidden psychopath lurking in many people's primitive brain.

The law reflects this addiction insofar as it is written by the addicts - and by those who profit from the addiction, one way and another. It's as though heroin addiction was marketed and encouraged, with those damaged by the drug or the associated crimes necessary to get the wherewithal to pay for it let-off because the judge and jury are dealers or petty-criminal addicts too.

*****

But the vigilantes commonly posting here are fools if they think prison sentences or public floggings will solve the problem. Personally I would far rather the moron in this case do 300 hours of community work (or several years) preferably in the hospitals and other facilities frequented by the mained victims of traffic "accidents". Prisons cost enormous amounts of money and spew out people even more psychopathic than when they went in.

Permanent driving bans also seem appropriate - assuming they can be enforced. Many will simply drive illegally, which also means uninsured, doing no favour to their next victim.

At bottom, this problem will never be solved until the motor car is rendered as a much improved technology. Self-driving cars may or may not help. Personally I would like to see them somehow disappear altogether. No chance of that unless fly-free telekinesis pods can be invented soon.

CUgel

Cugel wrote:

But the vigilantes commonly posting here are fools if they think prison sentences or public floggings will solve the problem. Personally I would far rather the moron in this case do 300 hours of community work (or several years) preferably in the hospitals and other facilities frequented by the mained victims of traffic "accidents". Prisons cost enormous amounts of money and spew out people even more psychopathic than when they went in.

 

CUgel

Cugel, I do enjoy reading your calm and reasoned posts but disagree with the presumption of vigilantes. Maybe we shouldn't be reading about more and more cases of such endangerment on the roads, maybe after we experience it first hand most mornings, reading yet another story where a personas life is risked by an incompetent selfish moron does us no good. However, we are not out there smashing up random cars so not exactly taking the law into our own hands.

The issue with suggesting prison is wrong is that by proxy this kind of behaviour has become increasingly acceptable. I'm sure there's dozens of us here that have been put at risk only for the moron to suggest it's our fault due to our position, not wearing the right clothing or generally being in the moron's way. If as a nation, we had not bothered applying laws for sexual abuse with prison sentences then the world today would be a lot more scary!

alansmurphy wrote:

Cugel wrote:

But the vigilantes commonly posting here are fools if they think prison sentences or public floggings will solve the problem. Personally I would far rather the moron in this case do 300 hours of community work (or several years) preferably in the hospitals and other facilities frequented by the mained victims of traffic "accidents". Prisons cost enormous amounts of money and spew out people even more psychopathic than when they went in.

 

CUgel

 

Cugel, I do enjoy reading your calm and reasoned posts but disagree with the presumption of vigilantes. Maybe we shouldn't be reading about more and more cases of such endangerment on the roads, maybe after we experience it first hand most mornings, reading yet another story where a personas life is risked by an incompetent selfish moron does us no good. However, we are not out there smashing up random cars so not exactly taking the law into our own hands.

 

The issue with suggesting prison is wrong is that by proxy this kind of behaviour has become increasingly acceptable. I'm sure there's dozens of us here that have been put at risk only for the moron to suggest it's our fault due to our position, not wearing the right clothing or generally being in the moron's way. If as a nation, we had not bothered applying laws for sexual abuse with prison sentences then the world today would be a lot more scary!

As is the case for probably every cyclist, I have been driven at by dangerous and uncaring morons to within an inch of my life. The natural response at the time is to want to murder them in return. But the sensible-us knows that this is going to solve nothing but rather merely compound the weight of human stupidity and nastiness in the world. Perhaps it will even get you killed as the car-weaponised fellow outguns your mere expletives.

After the incident is well over, one can take a less emotional view. Punishment of the tit-for-tat sort doesn't work, despite what Michael Howard ("Pwison werks") thought. It merely hardens attitides and escalates the aggresion. It churns out the seriously disaffected who will punish you, me and everyone (at random) for putting them in the cell with Bubba.

Revenge is for red-eyed Hollywood filum actors, who may do Very Bad Things to the villains with no unintended consequences,as they have a neat script where the goodies win and the baddies disappear. In real life, when "two tribes go to war" the score is often zero-zero.

Why doesn't the justice system seek rehabilitation, especially the kind that changes the attitudes of self-centred little skinbags by showing them the consequences of their actions (the victims) then doing service to make some degree of restitution to those victims, as far as possible?

Cugel

gw42 wrote:

Others (and myself) have said this many times, but the fundamental problem is that driving is clearly seen as a right to be taken away, and not a privilege that needs to be earned and kept. 

This is a view shared by most of the public, the judiciary, legislation and e.g. sentencing guidelines.

This.

That attitude has created a country where its actually quite difficult to carry on your life as you always did if for some reason you are unable to drive (everything is "out of town", for a start, and most people live a very long way from their place of work).  But a large part of the problem is the psychological aspect - "OMG I *need* my car!"

But let's take this bloke as an example - he drives from Mangotsfield to Avonmouth every morning, and then back again every evening.  Presumably he goes to jobs during the day.

Lets assume he doesn't want to ride a bike (added - got distracted when typing !) because there are all these scarry scaffolders running people over left right and centre...

He could get a Day Rider bus ticket, a bus goes straight from Mangotsfield into the Centre, and then another one goes straight out from the Centre to Avonmouth.  Probably an hour, hour and a half, tops, on the bus: I bet he can't drive it in much less than that...

Maybe he drives out to jobs during the day - but, he's not going to be scaffolding on his own, is he?  Presumably one of his colleagues could drive the van and then he'd be along for the ride.

Will be a change to his daily routine, but its certainly not the end of the world.

And there's waay less chance of him running someone over 

brooksby wrote:

But let's take this bloke as an example - he drives from Mangotsfield to Avonmouth every morning, and then back again every evening.  Presumably he goes to jobs during the day.

Lets assume he doesn't want to ride because there are all these scarry scaffolders running people over left right and centre...

He could get a Day Rider bus ticket, a bus goes straight from Mangotsfield into the Centre, and then another one goes straight out from the Centre to Avonmouth.  Probably an hour, hour and a half, tops, on the bus: I bet he can't drive it in much less than that...

Maybe he drives out to jobs during the day - but, he's not going to be scaffolding on his own, is he?  Presumably one of his colleagues could drive the van and then he'd be along for the ride.

Will be a change to his daily routine, but its certainly not the end of the world.

And there's waay less chance of him running someone over 

Or <deity-of-choice> forbid, he picks up a bike to make his commute.

brooksby wrote:

gw42 wrote:

Others (and myself) have said this many times, but the fundamental problem is that driving is clearly seen as a right to be taken away, and not a privilege that needs to be earned and kept. 

This is a view shared by most of the public, the judiciary, legislation and e.g. sentencing guidelines.

This.

That attitude has created a country where its actually quite difficult to carry on your life as you always did if for some reason you are unable to drive (everything is "out of town", for a start, and most people live a very long way from their place of work).  But a large part of the problem is the psychological aspect - "OMG I *need* my car!"

But let's take this bloke as an example - he drives from Mangotsfield to Avonmouth every morning, and then back again every evening.  Presumably he goes to jobs during the day.

Lets assume he doesn't want to ride a bike (added - got distracted when typing !) because there are all these scarry scaffolders running people over left right and centre...

He could get a Day Rider bus ticket, a bus goes straight from Mangotsfield into the Centre, and then another one goes straight out from the Centre to Avonmouth.  Probably an hour, hour and a half, tops, on the bus: I bet he can't drive it in much less than that...

Maybe he drives out to jobs during the day - but, he's not going to be scaffolding on his own, is he?  Presumably one of his colleagues could drive the van and then he'd be along for the ride.

Will be a change to his daily routine, but its certainly not the end of the world.

And there's waay less chance of him running someone over 

 

personally, I think work vans and lorries should not be used for getting to and from work. These must be kept at the emplyors location, unless self employed of course!

Down our street is a joke sometimes, with all sorts of lorries and vans taking up parking and blocking the roads!

brooksby wrote:

gw42 wrote:

Others (and myself) have said this many times, but the fundamental problem is that driving is clearly seen as a right to be taken away, and not a privilege that needs to be earned and kept. 

This is a view shared by most of the public, the judiciary, legislation and e.g. sentencing guidelines.

This.

That attitude has created a country where its actually quite difficult to carry on your life as you always did if for some reason you are unable to drive (everything is "out of town", for a start, and most people live a very long way from their place of work).  But a large part of the problem is the psychological aspect - "OMG I *need* my car!"

But let's take this bloke as an example - he drives from Mangotsfield to Avonmouth every morning, and then back again every evening.  Presumably he goes to jobs during the day.

Lets assume he doesn't want to ride a bike (added - got distracted when typing !) because there are all these scarry scaffolders running people over left right and centre...

He could get a Day Rider bus ticket, a bus goes straight from Mangotsfield into the Centre, and then another one goes straight out from the Centre to Avonmouth.  Probably an hour, hour and a half, tops, on the bus: I bet he can't drive it in much less than that...

Maybe he drives out to jobs during the day - but, he's not going to be scaffolding on his own, is he?  Presumably one of his colleagues could drive the van and then he'd be along for the ride.

Will be a change to his daily routine, but its certainly not the end of the world.

And there's waay less chance of him running someone over 

 

Buses are generally slower than you own vehicle and this includes cycling, due to the amount of times they stop plus the route they take.

I would suggest the guy gets a bike while banned. Just a shame the ban wasn't longer...

LastBoyScout wrote:

I get close passed regularly when cycling. I don't like it, but it's an unfortunate fact of cycling.

However, I've also been close passed, and even left hooked, when out with my daughter, which is completely unacceptable. It's a rear-mounted seat, so it's not as if she can't be seen from behind.

I'm sure they're trying to tell me I should be using the hopeless shared-use path, but I don't want to have to stop every 10 seconds to cross a side-road or bugger about passing pedestrians, dog walkers and runners.

If we hadn't been on the way to swimming lessons, I would have chased the left-hook driver, as he turned down a slow road that I would have had a good chance of catching him on. Equally, I wouldn't have wanted my daughter to have seen what happened when I caught him. Certainly wished I'd had the camera on that morning.

I got close passed and brake tested by a bloke in a 4x4 over Christmas when I had my 8yo son on the tagalong. Ended up scraping down the side of his motor as we tumbled gracefully onto the verge. Had my son not been there I would have lamped the bloke and probably worse (he admitted it was deliberate because "you were in the middle of the road mate" - yeah, because it was a single track high hedged country road and we were heading downhill)

As it was I had to tend to my distraught son and as much as I wanted to D-lock the fuck out of him and his Range Rover he got away with it. If I ever see him on his own it will be a different story.