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news
Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Penrith motorist sounded horn "four to five times" before fatal collision with e-bike rider
A Penrith man has been jailed for 12 months for causing the death of an e-bike rider by careless driving.
The News and Star reports that 71-year-old Andrew Lanham was driving a Ford Focus along the single track C3031 between Matterdale and Greystoke on February 28 last year when he approached a group of riders travelling in the same direction.
He overtook two female cyclists, one of whom had to pull off the road to let him past. He then sounded his horn "four to five times" before attempting to pass Frank Lee, an 81-year-old who was riding an electric bike.
Another cyclist told police that Lee did not deviate from his line, but was knocked off as Lanham passed.
Lanham told Carlisle Crown Court that he thought it was safe to overtake, but accepted in evidence: "I think it was an error of judgement."
Lee received basic life support at the scene and was taken to hospital. He died on September 14 2017 from complications resulting from multiple serious collision injuries.
Lanham denied causing death by dangerous driving and causing death by careless driving. He was cleared of the former charge but convicted of the latter.
As well as the jail sentence, Mr Justice William Davis also imposed an 18-month driving ban.
He told Lanham: "You took a risk. You overtook those cyclists one by one when you were driving far too close to them."
Davis said that despite Lanham’s previous good character and unblemished driving record, the jail term should be immediate and not suspended, "so that people know what happens when you take a risk by passing a cyclist".
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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28 comments
A huge issue here (regadless of the custodial sentence) is that it is accepted by careless instead of dangerous.
He knew the rider was "in his way" as he'd sounded his horn, he made a deliberate attempt to pass that by the outcome was proven to be dangerous (very fucking dangerous). How can this not be charged and make it through the courts?
My understanding is that it isn't the law that's really at fault - it's our peers. From what I've read and heard, people get charged with lesser charges because juries won't convict if drivers are charged with the "real" offence.
You only need one or two jury members to block a guilty verdict. So the entire case can be derailed by a couple of Top Gear Clarkson-lites who see cyclists as an irritation, and who take the "there but for the grace of God" approach to driving offences.
So I guess it's a balancing act between trying convict on the charge that the driver *actually* deserves, and the one that you can be confident of getting a conviction on.
Change the law so that driving offences have stricter punishments, and the Clarksons will be even more likely to refuse to convict. ("Why ruin a man's entire life for an honest mistake?") If any of you have done jury service, you'll realise that it only takes one person to totally derail things.
I don't know what the answer is. It's not like anyone is going to remove jury trials for serious driving offences. But I think that the fundamental problem is the British public, not the CPS or the laws.
It is both, but if the law was changed so that dangerous driving was better defined, e.g. driving which would cause you to fail your driving test, rather than the incredibly wooly current definition, it is likely that more juries would convict. If driving causes serious harm or death, it was by definition dangerous. If you are in charge of a machine that causes thousands of deaths and serious injuries every year, you must be well aware that if you drive badly, it could kill someone. If you have other people's lives in your hands, you have an absolute duty to behave responsibly, not take risks with their lives just because you can.
KILLING SOMEONE BY ANY MEANS SHOULD BE TREATED AS MANSLAWGHTER. THERE IS NO OTHER EXCUSE!!
I really hope and prey that MR.Big takes a shine to you while your inside you impatient murdering twat.
I don't think men of that persuasion are after 71 year old booty.
Person giving audible warning, steering away and braking to not much more than jogging speed as another person runs back into their path is strung up by the bollocks, CPS charge of manslaughter and 18months.
Person operating known killing machine, deliberately drives into a person at a higher speed than the first example so they can get past because they're too fucking selfish to wait because the lane is far too narrow to get past safely which is obvious to everyone, and gets 12 months and no national news
There is the massive injustice in how people on bikes are being discriminated against and how lenient motorists are being treated within our so called justice system.
Yet another load of pony, but yeah, e-scooters are the fucking devils work according to plod.
Please CUK/BC/Sustrans et al, get your heads together, put up a crowfunding call so that we can take the government to court in a legal action to make changes, in the way the roads are policed, the way cyclists are discriminated against and how motorists can simply kill and maim with barely a slap on the wrist.
I'd stump up a decent wedge for the pot to get these fucking scumbags brought to task over their failures to protect the vulnerable. It's sickening, costing the nation its health, costing the NHS tens of billions every year and of course the abject misery and sorrow for families on the recieving end!
Yes: I have to admit that I'd drawn a comparison with the Alliston/Briggs case too...
This. Me too, I'd contribute to crowdfunding to take this arrogant shower of drivers that have the effrontery to call themselves a government to court over their chronic failure to make the roads safe for the citizens.
Accepted in evidence that he "made an error of judgement". You think?
There are no winners here, but at least he did get a custodial sentence to think about his actions. Many don't, which is even more of a travesty.
What a fucking joke. A life lost due to someone's impatience. 6 months in (a low security) jail.
How cheap life is when it's riding a bike.
It's a shame that the moronic Audi 4x4 driver I had an argument with on a single track road recently will never read this article or if they do believe it applies to them. I am sick of drivers thinking that just because you are on a bike you have to yield to them by throwing yourself into a ditch or hedge simply because they've sounded their horn on numerous occasions. This despite the fact that I'm often riding faster than much of the agricultural traffic on the same roads. I always allow traffic past when it is convenient for me to do so, but I refuse to be bullied and occupy the lane when passing would be dangerous. Unfortunately we will never win against those morons who have a warped sense of entitlement just because they've got an expensive car.
And the ones who come through where parked cars have reduced a road to a single lane, and you're halfway through on a bike with priority because the parked cars are on the other side of the road, but you're only on a bike so you'll just budge over, won't you...?
I don't think prison is a deterent for certain driving offences because they are so spontaneous.
You drive with the certainty you will do what you intend to do without having an accident or collision.Most people drive fairly normally but obviously this argument gets thinner as things like speed and circumstances change. I've had a couple of car/motorbike accidents over the last 25+ years but I was never under the impression they would happen until I found I'd lost the front end and was sliding down the road etc. I got prosecuted for them but the laws in place never stopped me doing it in the first place as 'that guy' was never going to be me.
Prison won't be a deterent to other motorists passing cyclists as I'm sure they'll all believe they'll pull the move off. A bit like drink drivers all believe they won't get caught.
All we can do is punish people after the fact in most cases.
I agree, long driving bans would be a better punishment for most driving offences than short jail sentences.
The exceptions are driving without a license/driving while banned. And particularly egregious cases like this one.
That’s only any good if you can adequately police driving while banned, which is a very hard problem to solve.
Sounded horn 4 or 5 times (shows he was aware that passing would be dangerous as he was trying to bully the cyclist to yield to allow the pass), then passed regardless (Can't be a misjudgement, he's already tooted because he KNEW there wasn't space), hits and kills cyclist.
Will no court in the UK ever actually use dangerous driving properly when convicting these people. By using the horn in advance it's premeditaded, and dangerous, as he's already used his horn to bully and indicate the "dangerous" part, in that there wasn't space.
This nails it for me.
It wasn't an error of judgement, sounding his horn a number of times shows that he knew an overtake was far below the standard expected of a careful and competent driver, therefore blatantly dangerous driving. Juries need to be vetted to not be anti-cyclist in this way (would we accept a Neo-Nazi on a jury where the victim was say of afro-caribbean origin and the perpertrator was a white skinhead?).
"so that people know what happens when you take a risk by passing a cyclist".
The cyclist dies and you get a laughable 12 month sentence and are allowed to drive on the roads 18 months later.
These things happen so frequently they don't make the slightest of a splash in the mainstream media. Nothing will change with this blase attitue to punishing killers within motor vehicles.
'Lanham's barrister, Timothy Ashmole, had asked for any prison sentence to be suspended in view of his previous good character and unblemished driving record.'
Doesn't this simply mean that (like so many others) he just hasn't been caught, not that he keeps to the rules/law?
How can overtaking a cycle on a singletrack road not be described by:
(a)the way he drives falls far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver, and
(b)it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous.
We desperately need the government to hold the much promised and longer delayed inquiry into justice as experienced by cyclists who are killed or injured by drivers, which must include revising the law so that driving which is clearly dangerous is also legally dangerous; this case for instance.
Any rational person would agree that it was dangerous to pass a cyclist on a narrow road, not careless, but the law thinks otherwise. It is clear that the motorist just wanted the cyclists to get out of his way, that's why he sounded his horn, and he clearly knew that what he was doing was dangerous, but he couldn't wait to pass safely.
It still sounds like dangerous driving to me and 6 months of actual porridge is a pathetic punishment for killing someone! But well done to the judge for at least imposing an immediate custodial sentence and for his comment.
Sadly there's little evidence prison acts as a deterrent. Even if it did, outside of the cycling press and the local paper this case probably won’t get any attention. Presumably on foot this OAP is not a danger to the public, so you can achieve the same level of public protection with a driving ban. Then you could spend the tens of thousands of pounds it’ll cost to lock up the diver on victim compensation and driver awareness courses, so hopefully a pass like this, which should never have been attempted, is prevented from even happening.
Except driving bans are impossible to enforce. Especially as we apparently can't afford a police service any more. People just drive anyway.
The reality is the only time you are sure someone isn't driving is when they are in prison. Mind you, I would be perfectly happy with the use of very closely supervised probation or 'community punishments', but, again, there does not appear to be the manpower available to allow anywhere near a sufficient level of supervision for someone not locked up.
Also this is another example of the perverse way juries interpret the meaning of the words 'far' and 'expected standard'. If a behaviour regularly kills people then surely it's safe to say its 'dangerous'?
And the angry horn-tooting really speaks to the aggressive sense-of-entitlement that the culture inculcates in so many motorists. It sounds as if the guy just has an irresponsible and entitled attitude, which causes him to use his vehicle as a weapon. That's what needs to be challenged by any means possible, including by (but not limited to) locking people up.
You might be right, and the community punishment/restorative justice would probably be contracted out to a woefully unsuitable private company. I just can’t help believing there must be a better way than locking people up after the fact. If prevention is better than cure, cutting prevention/law enforcement services at the same time as sending huge sums to send a message seems flawed logic to me.
I suspect that the horn-blowing is the only reason he's gone to jail - if he'd not over egged it, and had just driven "carelessly" and tried (failed) to pass, then he would have gotten away with it too (TM Scooby Doo). By blowing his horn, he drew attention to his aggression, made himself actually look like the aggressive self-entitled so-and-so that he probably is.
prison does and will act as a deterrent for the vast majority. What negates the effectiveness of the threat of prison is the unlikeliness of getting caught /sentenced.
It's fear of getting caught that deters - as long as the punishment is sufficient enough - and as I see it we have two problems currently. Firstly, no one is getting caught, and then secondly, when they are they are not getting punished.