Cyclist-hating delivery driver who knocked woman off bike fined £550

I know there seems to be the collective position the this driver should spend 50 years in prison or something just as equal in punishment. He has been found guilty, had to pay a not so small sum and been forced to appear in court. He will remember this episode and will wish never to repeat it. I know that litigation procedure is extremely stressful.(just look at many reports of people suffering depression, illness from going through a legal prosecution)

For the moment until the judiciary catch on how serious it is to knock a cyclist off their bike. Making these such cases high profile on the Internet will have greater impact to make other drivers wary that their actions are being reported and in some cases recorded.

Get a video cam and report all dangerous behaviour, dont bleat about it, do something! Eventually the general behaviour will swing, remember drink driving, it is now socially un acceptable.

Interesting that there's lots of blame for juries and lawyers but rarely any for the reporting. In my experience it is often misleading. That's not always the journalist's fault, it's just very hard to sum up a three day trial in a couple of hundred words.

There are, of course, perverse verdicts. Probably no more in cycling cases than in many others. But it is very easy to make any case look like a perverse verdict by selective reporting, deliberately or otherwise.

In this case, I suspect that the dangerous driving car will have been put as him deliberately driving into her and the careless as him just driving too close. In that case the jury verdict would mean that they did not think he drove into her. Driving too close is probably careless, not dangerous.

That's just my guess. I can't be certain because, like everybody else commenting but notably unlike the jury, I didn't hear the evidence and have the chance to make a fair and reasoned decision.

Careless Driving is the most common charge because the requirements to prove careless are far less than dangerous as was shown here. If they had only prosecuted for dangerous driving the driver would have walked away free, at least they got 5 points and a hefty financial penalty. Their insurance will go through the roof for a conviction of careless.

I suspect that the dangerous driving failed because they could not show actual intent. e.g. reversing your car at the cyclist. The text here implied that the driver came too close to the cyclist, yes it was dangerous, but I suspect their lawyer convinced the jury that it was not intentional.

If there was any justice in the world, Dennis Baker should also have been sacked from his job for this crime. Trouble is, justice is a commodity in particularly short supply for the non-motorised fraternity. Does anyone know whether it has affected his employment status ??  Presumably, if he is still in a job his employer will now be counting the cost of an increased insurance premium.

I was a white van man for six years, working for a very large delivery company and I'm sure they wouldn't have put up with this standard of driving.

Having been in jury service recently I can only remind you all that juries have about the same ratios of cyclist hating idiots in them as the general population.

I was on a sexual assualt and kidnap case and would have to say that the jury had about the same ratio of misoginists as the general population (ie, a lot) and while the guy got one charge he got away very very lightly on account of it.

Post that experience I would say that unless you have a direct confession in a case like this it's going to be difficult to get the maximum sentence.

Quote:

Hope  the jury members eventually  feel the shame they deserve.

No, they probably thought they were upholding the rights of an everday guy against the 'cycling lobby'.

For me, this glass is at least a quarter full - seems they pursued a charge of dangerous driving as well as careless driving, something that almost sounded impossible very frequently in reports of other cases.

I assume the Jury is at fault here - unable to fully detach themselves from the empathy they feel toward the driver, they ignore the facts and go for the most lenient conviction.

I always go back to a case where I was juror when some of the other jurors were reluctant to pass a guilty verdict in case they met the defendant in the street, or worried that a guilty verdict could 'ruin the defendant's life'.  This was a mugging where an accomplice who had entered a guilty plea appeared as a prosecution witness and the Judge had basically instructed the Jurors to deliver a guilty verdict (the defendant admitted being present and the Judge instructed the Jury that, if we believed he was there, he was guilty by association).

Doesn't help that the prosecutor referred to the incident as a 'unnecessary accident'.  Maybe if it was referred to as a deliberate act the Jury may have seen that it was dangerous and not careless (if not assault).

It's hard to see how this doesn't fall into the Dangerous Driving catagory, from the CPS website 

CPS wrote:

A person drives dangerously when:

the way they drive falls far below the minimum acceptable standard expected of a competent and careful driver; and
it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in that way would be dangerous.

Some typical examples from court cases of dangerous driving are:
overtaking dangerously;

So what part of this wasn't dangerous driving?

Shame that the article missed the important point the verdict was delivered by the jury. 

Assault with a deadly weapon? Attempted murder? 

Assault with a deadly weapon? Attempted murder? 

There was no careless driving here. he was driving dangrously .

prosecuter said “Having been hooted by him, she stuck two fingers up to him which annoyed him to drive closer and closer to her causing her to fall off her bike. There was no need to do that, he didn't have to veer out of the way of anything, there was plenty of room to the left and this was a completely unnecessary accident.”

no, not an accident, this is assault, far beyond even dangerous driving, how this was prosecuted as careless is beyond me. It should be simple for anyone to grasp that deliberately hitting a human with a 3 tonne metal box is dangerous.

*edit*   missed the bit about cleared of dangerous" it is becoming increasingly clear to me that juries are unable to assess driving cases, presumably because their own standard of driving is so poor. We must not accept a situation where 2000 people are killed annually on the roads because the accepted standard is the lowest denominator.

“Having been hooted by him, she stuck two fingers up to him which annoyed him to drive closer and closer to her "

I'm not sure what "annoyed him to..." really means.  Strange wording.  

"...and this was a completely unnecessary accident.”

FFS, I think we're clear that it wasn't an accident.  

Agreed with the comments about "careless driving".  How can it be decided that he did this on purpose, and yet it be "careless"?!  

Even the prosecutor called it an accident!? what the actual?

Substitute the van with any other form of weapon, i.e. knife, crowbar, glass bottle and the offender would get a jail term. Run someone over in your car on the road, even admitting you did it deliberately, and the punishment you get will be negligible.

I've said it for years, if you ever want to 'get rid’ of someone don't hire a hit-man, just buy them a bike and follow in your car. Crazy.

The headline is misleading.  The cost to him for driving into this cyclist is well over three thousand pounds, plus the five points on his licence which will no doubt raise his insurance premium.

Ridiculous verdict.

Well done by the defense counsel... and the CPS as usual failed in bringing a solid case even with the driver's own dashcam showing it was intentional.

How is deliberately knocking someone off their bike charged as "careless"?

Careless driving? Are we serious?There must be a lawyer out there who's got the balls to challenge this sort of misuse of the law and wants to make a name for themselves...