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David Cameron (copyright World Economic Forum:Wikimedia Commons).jpgPM calls for "in-depth" review of sentences for causing death by dangerous driving
Prime Minister David Cameron says changes to the sentencing of drivers guilty of causing death by dangerous driving should be considered. After meeting the families of tandem riders Ross and Clare Simons and those of John Morland and Kris Jarvis, the PM has written to Justice Secretary Chris Grayling recommending and "in depth" look at aspects of sentencing in similar cases.
Ross and Clare Simons were killed in 2013 by Nicholas Lovell, a four-times convicted dangerous driver who failed to stop after hitting the couple.
John Morland and Kris Jarvis were killed by Alexander Walter, who was already banned, over twice the alcohol limit, and doing 70mph in a 30mph zone.
After meeting with the families and their MPs, the Prime Minister said the families had spoken "powerfully" about their loss, and that issues such as length of sentences and automatic early release for those guilty of causing death by dangerous driving should be examined.
In the letter, the PM wrote:
Last week I met Alok Sharma MP, Chris Skidmore MP and the families of John Morland, Kris Jarvis, and Ross and Clare Simons, to discuss the changes to the law that they want to see on causing death by dangerous driving.
The families spoke powerfully about the horrific loss that they have suffered and their strong views that the sentencing framework in place had not delivered justice in their cases.
Whilst noting that we are reviewing this issue so could not make specific commitments now, I agreed that the following issues should be considered in depth as part of the review we are carrying out on sentencing for driving related offences:
The maximum sentence length available for causing death by dangerous driving (currently a 14 year sentence);
Whether offenders convicted of causing death by dangerous driving should be denied automatic early release from prison at the half-way point in the sentence;
The question of whether sentences should be awarded concurrently or consecutively in cases where a number of people are killed as a result of dangerous driving, whilst recognising that the courts normally determine this issue;
The discounts provided for late guilty pleas in these types of cases;
The length of the driving ban given to offenders, and the potential for ensuring that no period of their sentence counts towards the driving ban.
Petitions for justice for the riders killed in these crashes have been signed by over 85,000 people.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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30 comments
Two points:
1: As a general principle we seem to treat those who have been individually affected by something as some kind of expert rather than someone who has a non objective view point. Plenty of bad policy comes this way, I'd like my policy developed from data based hypothesis followed by randomised control trials.
2: It has long been a principal of British law that you punish the crime not the outcome. This is particularly true for motoring related incidents as death and serious injury are essentially a random outcome from an impact. We should be looking at how to detect and correct dangerous/drunk driving or unsafe vehicles not disproportionately punish those guilty of these offenses unlucky enough to be involved in a fatal accident.
As an aside as accidents tend to be clustered it would be a sound assumption that road design is a major factor in human error and that it's far easier to change roads than human nature.
The old magistrates training used to have an example in it that went something like this:
You and I are driving we look down at the radio.when we look back up we see a queue of traffic too late to stop. I strike the back of a strong car, we get out and exchange insurance details. You strike from a slightly different angle on a weak car. The driver bangs their head and dies. How should the law treat out cases?
Additional penalties for killing somebody are pure retribution and are also completely ineffective as a deterrent because even somebody who drives pissed doesn't head out believing that they are going to kill somebody.
Since we haven't tried the experiment I have no idea how you can be so sure there would be no deterrent effect of 'additional penalties'. Out of interest, would you make the same comment about a burglar or mugger who killed someone in the process of their crimes? After all, they probably didn't "head out believing that they are going to kill somebody" either.
My view on the deterrent aspect is based on two bits of evidence.
1: The enforcement of harsh penalties (e.g. the death penalty on murder) do not correlate strongly with reductions in offending because offenders either make their decision on the spur of the moment or don't believe that they will get caught. Very few people think "If I kill this person I'll only get life, let's do this".
In both cases the ends (slight reduction in offending) don't justify the means (a harsh penalty regularly applied to often to normal people).
2: The chances of an individual drink driver killing somebody is very low. ~200 people were killed by drink divers, however 80,000 people were caught drink driving and 800,000 tests were conducted. I couldn't find estimates of how many drink drive journeys were made. But my point is singling out the ones unlucky enough to kill somebody is both essentially harsh, random and unlikely to be effective.
Who is the greater criminal someone just over the drink drive limit who happens to be involved in an accident that kills somebody out someone who regulary heads out onto the roads steaming drunk?
In the case of a burglar killing somebody we have laws covering murder, manslaughter and assault. These laws would equally apply to somebody using a vehicle to deliberately harm somebody.
Finally the use of randomised control trials in sentencing is actually one of the most promising application of evidenced based policy. Hopefully one day it will happen.
Pre-election lies detected!
Does this mean we have to root for DC to win the general election?
I think what would make more of an impact is if ALL the major parties got together and said no matter who wins in May, this is going to happen.
This close to an election my fear is that if the conservatives lose or have to form yet another coalition govt. then there are many promises that will simply get brushed under the carpet and forgotten about.
In any coalition situation the Tories will be the major party and will get most of what they want. So if they are serious about cycling and changing the laws affecting drivers they will be able to make it happen. I don't believe they are though and that this is just a soundbite that will be repeated in 5 years time.
How about changing the law so 'Causing Death by Dangerous Driving' no longer exists?
Murder, Manslaughter...that is your lot
That charge was brought in specifically because juries wouldn't convict on charges of "motor manslaughter", which fell within involuntary manslaughter. The "causing death by dangerous driving" charge is supposed to turn on whether the driving fell "far below the standard of the competent and careful driver", but as everyone thinks they are competent and careful and no wants to convict someone of doing something they might conceivably do, no one convicts of that either, so we're stuck with the same problem. No one wants to convict people who drive badly, because they know they do it all the time themselves.
Could he have a word with his colleague Pickles, to tell him to shut up about "the War on Motorists"?
There's no reason to think he doesn't genuinely care, but he probably doesn't care enough to do anything that would actually make a difference.
Better sentencing guidelines on their own won't fix the problem with the justice system though, it needs a change on so many levels; we need judges/magistrates who don't just go for the bottom end of their guidelines; we need juries to stop being so complacent about poor driving standards and start convicting people instead of thinking "it could happen to me" and letting them off; we need the CPS to keep bringing cases to court (the CPS do appear to be bringing more cases to court lately, which is a good sign, unless that's just an illusion based on better reporting); and we need the police to actually police the roads.
Yes, at the moment politicians only care about having a job in 2 months time and will lie as much as they can before then to bribe as many people as they can. The Tories have made no impact on cycling improvements where I live, which is the same as the previous mob had in the whole of their three terms in power. Both have actually made conditions worse, deliberately so in some cases.
should have mentioned in my previous comments.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jan/29/police-numbers-fall-by-34...
The only way to deal with road crime is policing, the current government have had 5 years to do something, and they have, they have cut police numbers. I have complete faith in politicians, however the faith I have is that whatever they say will be what gets them votes. Results don't actually matter because the electorate will have forgotten before it gets that far. It is easy to say war on motorists, it is easy to say be tough on the causes of crime, it is far harder to meaningfully address the problem and do something constructive.
Sadly I see very little from ANY party that convinces me that they are really interested in solving things.
David Cameron, like most politicians, doesn't care about cyclists, dead or otherwise.
He, like most politicians, doesn't care about anyone but himself.
This is a man that abandoned his own child in a pub for crying out loud.
The tariff should be compared to murder (e.g. deliberately driving into cycling) and manslaughter. Those convicted should face lifetime driving bans.
And what about all of the dangerous drivers who are just charged with careless driving and get a slap on the wrist.
This doesn't even begin to sort out the problems with UK driving laws. Strict liability, a legal definition of safe passing distance, better wording of careless and dangerous driving laws etc, driving bans far too short, licenses not being revoked.
@bendertherobot
very true
unfortunately, this exposes the shocking complacency with which many deaths caused to pedestrians / cyclists / motorists by road traffic collisions (RTC) are treated as being part of 'normal business' of using motor vehicles in our society.
If "terrorists" were killing on average 5 people a day in the UK, there would be outrage and a severe political consequence.
If terrorists were killing 5 people a day here in the UK I imaging we'd probably be in a state of emergency with the army on the streets.
PLUS +1
It's carnage on the roads just recently the number of road "accidents" with mutipal deaths just recently is shocking, there were two over the weekend, and lets not for get the horror of the HGV in bath. But is back to business as normal with drivers being more interested in being about to park where ever and when ever they want, no more than 2 feet from where there going.
This looks very much like an election stunt, this isn't issue which has suddenly appeared out of no where there have been multiple protests over the last five years.
Changes in the law and the way it is applied is well over due. We don't need longer custodial sentencing, but life time driving bans. All too often there is an over causal attitude to dangerous driving, it is time that such behaviour became socially unacceptable.
The time taken to get to a review and the fact it was only recently debated in the commons is certainly frustrating, it seemed to take a lot of coroner reports, grieving families and public anger to get to that point.
However I don't think its anything to do with the election, and not a 'stunt', it just seems the wheels of government turn slowly..
2 women who have lost their husbands should not need to speak of their loss to persusade let alone speak powerfully of it.
Would also be nice to see Cameron making a promise to have a proper look at the shocking state of road policing in the UK, specifically in our large Cities?
Although, of course, this would require a big increase in Policing budgets with a shift away from 'terrorism' which is the hot Political potato, towards road safety.
Even though road traffic collisions kill on average 5 people a day in the UK; whilst according to official data 1 person (fusilier lee rigby) has been killed in the UK during the past 3 years directly as a result of 'terrorism'.
I'm sorry, but what is this "road policing" of which you speak?
What do you expect with 30000 less Police officers in the 5 years of this govt.
5 years and now it gets a mention, greenest government ever anyone.
I smell an election coming. Cameron will do exactly sweet FA. He is even more odious than the killer drivers that slaughter us as he is supposed to make sure these killers are punished properly. He will do absolutely anything to get votes but absolutely bugger all to improve safety of cyclists on the roads.
Let's hope this is not another election stunt!
Everything a politician says is an election stunt.
What? Do you seriously believe for one second that this is anything other than electioneering?
The issue has been left sufficiently late in this government that it will not get anything done whatsoever before the election. There will be one of two outcomes:
1. Cons do not form a government: No changes to law or sentencing will occur. The incoming government have not promised anything about this issue, so they will do nothing.
2. Cons form a government: The fact that this is only a promise to "look into" the matter will lead to lots of guidelines and "self-regulatory" recommendations, with no change whatsoever to court practice, the law, or policing.
Either way, there will be no positive outcome. Shiny-face is just trying to look like slightly less of an utter bastard just before the election. Just after the election, he can afford to look like a complete liar, regardless of whether he is in power or not, because the electorate can do nothing about it at all for another half decade. By then, anything he has said now will be forgotten, buried under years more politicians' lies.
Yes there is. It is the default starting position for all politicians, and all elected government ministers. Until a member of his own family dies under the wheels of a motorist, he will not care for a single second whether anyone else in the nation lives or dies for any reason whatsoever.
The ONLY thing he cares about is keeping himself and his party in power. NOTHING ELSE AT ALL MATTERS TO HIM. Your life is irrelevant to the Prime Minister, and this has been true for a very long time. It will be true of the next Prime Minister. Everything, absolutely everything he does is primarily linked to advancing himself, his party, and his acolytes and supporters. All other considerations are secondary.
All visible "caring" from the PM is PR.
It would have been quite hard to do it much earlier as the deaths occurred in 2013 and it must have taken some time for the trial and sentencing etc.
It might be PR but at least it gets the issue in the news.
Hopefully enough people will sign the petition and it 'might' get debated after the election by whoever is in power then.
Cameron also needs to channel more into looking into prevention. I.e driving skills, driving technology, road user attitudes and behavior, distractions behind the wheel, banned drivers etc. The situation will not improve even if we double the maximum sentence, though I fully support locking this scum away for longer.