Following a road accident near Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham on 1.4.2002 when the driver of a motor car ran over and fatally injured a 6 year old child, then stopped, looked back and drove off, many of the veteran posters on this site made various comments.
Yesterday a 34 year old male was sentenced, as the driver involved in this incident, at Leeds Crown Court
to 2 years imprisonment and banned for 10 years for:
Causing Death by dangerous driving (of the four brakes on the car only one was working and that was impaired)
Failing to stop after an accident.
Failing to report an accident.
No Insurance.
Driving Licence irregularity.
Apart from the emotional bang the hastard how do we stop such people from being on the road and is this a fair punishment?
((Mark RBLS) did try to bring up the original post and tack it on but could not find it - sorry).
DVD.
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Why should manslaughter not apply?
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What punishment can be adequate for taking a young life and whatever it is how can it in any way make up the parents' loss?
All I can say is a similar set of accident circumstances in the Philippines would get the driver charged with "culpable homicide". The failing to stop and render assistance would especially not go down well and the culprit would be looking at 20-25 years in the tank for sure plus damages.
Your first question therefore becomes the more relevant of the two and I have no answer.
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What punishment can be adequate for taking a young life and whatever it is how can it in any way make up the parents' loss?
All I can say is a similar set of accident circumstances in the Philippines would get the driver charged with "culpable homicide", something akin to manslaughter. The failing to stop and render assistance would especially not go down well and the culprit would be looking at 20-25 years in the tank for sure plus damages.
Your first question therefore becomes the more relevant of the two and I have no answer.
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It is not a fair sentence and when one relates it to others it is difficult to understand what is in a Judges mind when he decides.
Four years for Lord Archer perjuring himself.
Eighteen months for the two thugs throwing a beer can and shouting racial abuse.
And two years for this manslaughter (in my opinion) case.
And this will be automatically halved anyway.
How to stop them? By making it most difficult for anyone to drive in a car which isn't clearly displayed with the necessary legal requirments such as Insurance, Tax and MOT.
A sex offenders registration scheme has been set up and I often think a similar scheme ought to be in operation for people who clearly should never be in a position to own or use a potentially lethal weapon such as a car.
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Suffolk Police have just acquired a high tech van equipped for number plate recognition. It instantly checks for valid insurance, MOT, VED, criminal record database (cars wanted in connection with crime banned drivers etc.), and one or two other databases they wouldn't tell me about. I have only seen them using it for training so far. The only drawback is the manpower required to operate it, one in the van, and traffic car/motorbike hidden up the road to pull people in. Given that drawback I don't know how much we will see it in action.
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I don't know the circumstances of the offenders driving history in this case, but in most similar instances it turns out that the offender has a long record of serious driving offences. Yet the courts never hand out a lifetime driving ban no matter how bad the offence. Ten years in this case is ridiculous, the driver has shown that he is just as unfit to hold a driving licence as a convicted robber is to have a firearms certificate. In addition to a much longer prison sentence he should have been banned for life, with the threat of another lenghty spell inside should he ignore it.
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I think this is truly appalling and that the charge should have been manslaughter or something similar. Given the appalling state of the car and the driver's callous failure to stop he had absolutely no excuses in my opinion and should have been banned for life and imprisoned for at least 5 years. Furthermore in order to disuade banned drivers from driving illegally, I would impose an automatic 1 year prison sentence for anyone caught driving whilst banned to be added to any other punishment deemed appropriate for the offence at the time. This might serve to focus the mnds of those idiots who seek to avoid responsibility for their actions !
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Wasn't there once a scheme where sentencing included time working in a hospital ER where road accident victims come in?
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Sounds dangerous to have this kind of chap in Casualty, you wouldn't even trust him to mop the floor safely.
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Growler,
By coincidence, I met a friend on Friday night who had just heard some disturbing news - his sons (16 and 15) had taken the day off school (a casual-waering spring day apparently, so they decided to bunk it!) and had taken their mother's car for a bit of a spin.
The car (a) had already be sold to somebody else; and (b) was untaxed, unlicensed etc, as they are waiting for the somebody else to fetch it at end October, when he returns to the country.
Obvioulsy, neither of the kids have licenses.
Fortunately they came back from their trip intact, as did the car, but my friend - in addition to a total grounding, with no TV, video, computer, going out, etc* - also arranged with a police friend to spend Saturday night at the local hospital casualty ward, watching the victims of road accidents coming in.
Today (Sunday) he will be taking them down to the local nick, where there is an impound yard full of accident-damaged vehicles.
Hopefully this will get the message across.
(* I would have whacked the living daylights out of them!)
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Much longer prison sentence? There'd be uproar about how long convicted murderers, paedophiles and so on get sentenced for.
Lifetime driving ban? That would be far more sensible, then back into prison if he gets behind the wheel. However the partner of a less respected member of the family has been in and out of prison for this and it won't deter some people from driving anyway. Thats were the longer sentence argument makes sense because then you are protecting society.
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I thought the b-----d had been banned for life.
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Up my way about five years ago a man knocked over and killed 3 cyclists all from the same family while blind drunk (police found bottle of vodka or other spirit in his car).
His punishment was a paltry four years prison (only served half that of course) and a 15 year driving ban, not lifetime one!
I am not a hypocrite (excuse the spelling) though, I drunk and drove as an idiot in my younger years and thank my lucky stars I was not involved in an accident. It is true that wisdom only comes with age.
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Sorry I meant to say i AM a hypocrite!! (again excuse the spelling).
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Miller -- sometimes wisdom comes age, and sometimes age just shows up alone :-)
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