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A car owner who did not replace his worn tyres has been jailed in a landmark case.
Henry Reynolds, 31, a father of two, was warned after an MOT test that his Mercedes’ rear tyres were near the legal limit but continued to drive a further 7,000 miles on them until the vehicle was involved in a fatal road collision in May 2018.
An odd case involving "aiding and abetting causing death by dangerous driving"
The original article was in the Telegraph but as that it behind a paywall I found another report:-
www.mynewsmag.co.uk/behind-bars-driver-who-failed-.../
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Whilst I can fully understand them being prosecuted, fined and even banned if their tyres were below the legal limit (and caught when driving), it is IMHO not right to do so if the tyres are deemed legal when pulled over or checked by Plod. After all, that's the whole point of the definition of them being legal or not.
I article you cite appears to say the prosecution was really due to the tyres not being legal at the time of the accident, which would be grounds for prosecution, especially when they were cited as needing replacement very soon at the previous year's MOT.
Saying that, if another driver (as long as they are allowed to drive that car including with proper insurance cover) is driving, they are ultimately responsible for checking the car is roadworthy before using it.
Whilst people cannot be reasonably expected to perform the type of checks done on an MOT, cheking the tyres to see if they are in good enough condition and to the correct pressure would be one of the 'reasonable' checks most people would undertake. A responsible person would then had said 'no to driving the car and called them both a cab to take them home and told their 'friend' to get the tyres replaced and anything else wrong with it seen to before driving again, and that they would report them to Plod if they drove again without fixing any serious problems (MOT failure type).
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So what you are trying to say in a long-winded form is that if the tyres are illegal, they should be prosecuted and if they are legal, they should not?
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The situation seems to be that the Merc's owner was advised at MoT that his tyres were close to the limit. He did nothing and the car accumulated another 7000 miles. By that time, or at least after the accident they were, in places, worn down to the carcass.
Although Reynolds was in the passenger seat as he'd been drinking his driver, Quirke, was over the limit too. He was jailed for five years three months and disqualified for 7 years + at an earlier hearing. I doubt he'd checked the tyres before moving off. Would any of us take a flashlight or whatever and check a friend's car before driving? Even if we were sober - and Quirke was not?
Reynolds was initially discharged in late 2019 after a hung jury at his first trial.
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Whilst I can fully understand them being prosecuted, fined and even banned if their tyres were below the legal limit (and caught when driving), it is IMHO not right to do so if the tyres are deemed legal when pulled over or checked by Plod.
Think you are missing some important info. The car had an advisory on the MOT that the rear tyres were close to the legal limit but when the car was involved in a fatal accident 3 months and 7,000 miles later those same tyres were on the car and by that time below the legal limit.
So basically you are wrong on all counts. They were not pulled over by plod (it was after an accident) and the tyres were not deemed to be legal at that time.
Edited by thunderbird on 22/12/2021 at 09:34
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Whilst I can fully understand them being prosecuted, fined and even banned if their tyres were below the legal limit (and caught when driving), it is IMHO not right to do so if the tyres are deemed legal when pulled over or checked by Plod.
Think you are missing some important info. The car had an advisory on the MOT that the rear tyres were close to the legal limit but when the car was involved in a fatal accident 3 months and 7,000 miles later those same tyres were on the car and by that time below the legal limit.
So basically you are wrong on all counts. They were not pulled over by plod (it was after an accident) and the tyres were not deemed to be legal at that time.
My point was that the OP's initial account seemed to imply that they were prosecuted just because of an MOT advisory. After reading the article itself, I noted that had not been the case and stated as much further down in my comments.
I decided to keep my original comments in because of the ambiguity of the original post, so that it would be clear to those of us possibly thinking (before reading the report) as I initially had to realise that the judge had not said they were guilty because of something that wasn't against the law.
Perhaps I wasn't as clear on this as I could've been. No need to get snippy over it.
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... the prosecution was really due to the tyres not being legal at the time of the accident, which would be grounds for prosecution, especially when they were cited as needing replacement very soon at the previous year's MOT..
The legality of the tyres causing the accident is the essential point. In a sense the previous MoT pass is irrelevant, even though it was still current. It just showed that the keeper had been warned to do something about it, but hadn't.
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... the prosecution was really due to the tyres not being legal at the time of the accident, which would be grounds for prosecution, especially when they were cited as needing replacement very soon at the previous year's MOT..
The legality of the tyres causing the accident is the essential point. In a sense the previous MoT pass is irrelevant, even though it was still current. It just showed that the keeper had been warned to do something about it, but hadn't.
That's why I initially got confused, as the OP's comments did not specifically state that the tyres had indeed deteriorated (doing 7k miles may not have lead to them being illegal - I've done that on ones with lowish tread before and they were still legal, though their wet performance made me change them) to be illegal by the time of the crash.
The article cleared it up.
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... the the previous MoT pass is irrelevant, even though it was still current. ...
The MOT just shows the car was legal on the day it passed, no more,
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... the the previous MoT pass is irrelevant, even though it was still current. ...
The MOT just shows the car was legal on the day it passed, no more,
In this particular case, it shows that the OWNER was warned several months previously and did nothing to rectify the issue, an essential part of the case of aiding and abetting which the owner was charged/convicted of.
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No need to get snippy over it.
Not getting snippy. Just a simple fact that you obviously commented without reading the whole story.
For someone who seems to research topics painstakingly thoroughly it seemed rather strange.
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No need to get snippy over it.
Not getting snippy. Just a simple fact that you obviously commented without reading the whole story.
For someone who seems to research topics painstakingly thoroughly it seemed rather strange.
I am not always keen on clicking on links to sites I don't know, for obvious security reasons - including their use of tracking cookies, etc, etc.
In this case, I read the OP's comments, started typing, then once I'd checked the site was ok, read the article, but thought my initial comments still were reasonably valid in the context I've mentioned, so left them in as well as those (which were correct as they pertained to the article) later on.
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I am not always keen on clicking on links to sites I don't know, for obvious security reasons -
Neither am I but the topic was started by a trusted forum member thus I felt safe clicking on it.
I read the OP's comments, started typing, then once I'd checked the site was ok, read the article, but thought my initial comments still were reasonably valid in the context I've mentioned
How was your comment
"Whilst I can fully understand them being prosecuted, fined and even banned if their tyres were below the legal limit (and caught when driving), it is IMHO not right to do so if the tyres are deemed legal when pulled over or checked by Plod"
reasonably valid in any way. As I pointed out earlier they were not pulled over by the Police (they had been involved in a fatal accident) and the rear tyres were below the legal limit.
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