Dangerous driving
On August 24th 2003 a lapse of concentration on behalf of one driver resulted in the deaths of three people in another car. The driver escaped with a £1,500 fine.The reason for this is:
"CPS spokesman John Revell said: ’There is no suggestion of any bad or wrong driving before the collision, just a momentary piece of carelessness. It is the seriousness of the driving that we have to consider, not the serious of the consequences’”.
Although there is no question of retrospective punishment road-safety campaigners have set up a petition calling for there to be tougher sentences on drivers who cause death or injury through dangerous driving.
I mention this as a friend of my girlfriend was one of the two in the car who survived. I haven't really thought through whther the proposal is a good idea or not. An initial thought is that it's usually bad policy to make policy in response to terrible accidents such as this, but having said that if we took that view the law would rarely be changed.
Update: The BG has noted that the driver is appealing against the sentence (only a google cache I'm afraid). Regardless of the merits of the law change I think we can safely make some assumptions about him.
posted by Matthew @ 3/31/2004 03:25:00 PM
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