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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Suspended sentence for Yorkshire driver who killed oncoming cyclist while overtaking
A driver has been sentenced to seven months in jail, suspended for a year, after admitting causing the death of a cyclist by careless driving near Brighouse. Philip Roper hit and killed William Stoker, who was cycling in the opposite direction, while overtaking another car on January 14 last year.
The Huddersfield Daily Examiner reports that Roper had been travelling along the A6025 behind a BMW which had moved to overtake a slower moving Kia.
Roper, driving a Citroen C5, had also moved to overtake and while prosecutor Stephen Wood said that the road was theoretically wide enough to allow the manoeuvre and leave enough space for an on-coming cyclist, this depended upon the position of the vehicles.
“This collision occurred when the defendant pulled out further into the offside than the BMW and collided with Mr Stoker, who was there to be seen,” said Wood, who said the cyclist had been wearing a red high-vis jacket.
Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said Roper should have waited before making the manoeuvre.
“You should have waited,” he said. “By the time you saw the cyclist, if you saw him at all, it was too late.”
Roper had been due to stand trial on the charge, but entered a guilty plea last week. Tom Gent, representing him, said that his client was “utterly shattered” by what had happened and was still unable to sleep properly.
The court heard that the guideline given to judges in cases of “momentary inattention” causing death was a low-level to high-level community order.
As well as the suspended sentence, Roper was banned from driving for two years and made subject to a five-month electronically-monitored home curfew.
Durham Hall conceded that the sentence would not satisfy the victim’s family or many of the public.
Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.
Latest Comments
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54 comments
"was still unable to sleep properly"
Shit, let's hope he manages to sort that now that he knows he's not going to prison...
Ok, I get it. It really is truly awful that someone has died needlessly. It should never have happened, but it has. But, please do tell me, what benefit to anyone is gained from sending this person to prison? It almost certainly has ruined the driver's life, as well as numerous others. He will almost certainly never do this again. So what gain is there in inprisoning him?
So, let's send him to prison. The average cost to the taxpayer per new prisoner is £119,000 plus £40,000 per year per prisoner. So yes, let's send him to prison and cost the tax payer the best part of a quarter of a million pounds. It doesn't bring the cyclist back, his family and friends won't feel any better, he won't be rehabilitated any better or quicker (he doesn't need any), but the taxpayer is worse off and the Road.cc readers are happy. Well done.
No, prison is not the answer in 99% of these cases. Education and rehabilitation is. Surely a better sentence is to force this man to become a driving tutur or public role model for improved driving?
Nothing anyone does will ever fill the gap that this cyclist's death has left. Ever. But prison is not the answer, despite what appears to be a desire amongst Road.cc readers to fill prisons with drivers and then complain there is no money left from public purses to fund better roads and infrastructure...
Think you'd be coming out with the same appeasing sentiments if it was your child or partner you had to go and visit at the mortuary to identify their corpse?
No,thought not.
No, i probably wouldn't. But that's the exact reason why those emotionally involved with the situation do not have a say over the sentencing. If it were me I would want him executed. Doesn't make it right though, does it?
So you've actually just made my point for me. So thank you.
And it's not appeasement. Not at all. It would be appeasement if the judge had read this website and decided to sentence the driver to 30 years in prison to keep the baying mob happy. That's appeasement. This is an analysis of the reasoning behind a sentence in a way that derives most benefit to society whilst also trying, in some way, to recognise the loss suffered by the victim's loved ones.
Yeah. British justice always hits that sweet spot for everyone involved.
Very heartwarming to see.
Where did I say it did? Please, tell me.
Any sentencing is a compromise. It's a balancing act between the desire for punishment arising from those affected, the cost of such punishment, the value to society in punishment, the value to society in rehabilitation and prevailing scoial opinions at the time. It's imperfect, but I would much rather have the wonderful system we have than one like in Russia, or China, where people are imprisoned, for life, for certain crimes that don't warrant such a punishment.
We live in a society and world where money is placed at a higher value than human life. I don't like it, but it's true. That's why sentencing is the way it is and it will never change. It doesn't make it right, and that's not what I'm saying, but it is the truth. If you can't accept that, that is not my problem.
The point of the sentencing is one of deterrence. If the punishment is too lenient then there is no incentive to other people to maintain a high standard of competence. If you drive a car, then you have taken on a level of responsibilty to the other road users. The courts need to give a clear portrayal of the consequence of driving without that level of care. The benefit to society is in ensuring other people don't drive as badly. This sentence doesn't send that message.
Indeed. And a two year driving ban is just offensively short.
A custodial sentence should be the default answer to driving while banned though.
The problem with the many verdicts that are like this is motorists can act effectively act with impunity when it comes to driving in a fit and proper way. Both the law and the legal system are not funtioning effectively - which act as a deterrent to those who because of impatience, risk the lives of you, me and most other people who read this website.
Whilst retribution would not be the right motivation for a custodial sentence in this case, the concept of being responsible for ones actions is - and that is where we are all being let down right now.
I don't disagree but tend to look at it a different way. This is an education problem. If drivers were better trained and better educated as to how to drive and deal with cyclists then it would be easier to arm the law with "punishments" for transgressions as they would be rarer and, as such, more serious. It's entirely a prevention point. Punishing someone for something that has already happened is closing the door after the horse has bolted.
Prevention is pro-active and friendly and benefical to absolutely everyone. There are no down sides. Punishment is reactive, draconian and beneficial to no one. There are no up sides.
I disagree. Education is over-rated as a cure for all ills (I often argue with a liberal friend who sees it as the answer to all problems of inequality and declining social mobility, for example).
Maybe it's so often over-rated because those who make the arguments have had a lot of it themselves! It just seems to get used as an excuse for not really doing anything (cf the 'courses' drivers can go on as an alternative to fines, which don't seem to achieve anything at all, or the posters telling people to get more exercise. etc).
I would favour physical, material changes to the world and to the incentives and costs people are presented with, over giving someone lectures that won't make any difference to anything.
Idealistic drivel.
Too many impatient,incompetent,dangerous morons sharing our roads with us. Very few of 'em interested in being 'educated' how to drive more safely. They will always drive like cnuts no matter how hard you think you can 'prevent' it.
Punishment helps society because it stops them from getting back behind the wheel and wrecking more lives.
It's to act as a deterrent. Currently there is minimal deterrent to killing a cyclist.
You think putting someone in prison for a few years is expensive? Killing and maiming is expensive too. How much tax do these dead people pay versus when they're alive? How long are they dead for? How much does it cost to treat, rehabilitate and care for a victim of a life-changing injury?
If people knew they'd get a 14 year sentence for this shit they'd think twice before overtaking an already overtaking car.
I don't want to live in a society where the threat of imprisonment is a deterrent. That's what happens in the likes of Russia and China. The purpose of prison is a mixture of punishment, rehabilitation and protection of the public at large. I welcome you to point me to any official UK government guidance that states that one of the purposes. There are lots of studies that show that prison may act as a detterent for serial offenders.
And you really think the driver thought about that when he was completing the manouvre? You really think he completing some form of reasoning along the lines of
"oh, let's overtake, oh, there's a cyclist, what happens if I hit him? Well, I could go to prison but, let's be honest, the UK's soft on that stuff so it'll be fine, what's the worst that can happen? Let's go for it".
Nope, it was a momentary, careless, tragic, lapse of judgement that even if the end result would have been his execution, would not have stopped it from happening.
There's a reason why I don't tend to post on these cycling websites, this has reminded why.
Is it because you're Jeremy Corbyn and most normal people think you talk out of your pooper?
And I don't much like living in a society where the judicial system gives a lower sentence for having a careless approach to driving, and killing someone as a result, than it does to someone who steals a bottle of water from a shop during a riot, or who rips off a life-insurance company.
But careless lapses of judgement happen all the time on the roads, and one reason is that many drivers habitually adopt low standards of care. Largely because they know it won't be them who pays the price.
These things are not exclusively 'single mistakes' they are usually a consequence of a choice as to how much care to habitually take. And that choice is made in the context of what the penalties are for screwing up. Most of these guys _are_ serial offenders, they just have gotten away with their carelessness before.
Do you really think if all cyclists were carrying nitroglycerine and would explode with car-destroying force if so much as lightly tapped, SMIDSY would be as common?
Despite all that I actually agree with you (a bit more than everyone else seems to). In that I think punishment won't really solve the problem and prevention is far preferable. But I don't think 'education' is the right form of prevention. Doing far more to control where cars can go and who can use them is a better way to achieve that.
These sort of 'never send anyone to prison' arguments are fair-enough in themselves (honestly, I accept that they are), but I would say they are inappropriate on a story where the issue is not prison as such, but the differentially-lenient treatments of certain kinds of crime.
Why not go and post on those cases (e.g. manslaughter or murder cases not involving cars) where the culprit has actually been sent to prison? Go argue about those cases first, then, when you've gotten prison sentences abolished for them, get back to us.
I don't think you understand how this shit works... Apart from having a good moral compass, what stops you from stealing something? Or hitting somebody who really p!sses you off, or even worse, shooting somebody who hurts a member of your family?
It might be the consequences of taking those actions.
That is what prison sentences are for, they don't bring back murdered people or replace stolen items, they prevent normal people from doing the bad things in the first place.
So, £0.25m to make some other prick think twice about endangering my life the next time he fancies overtaking while I'm cycling in the opposite direction is £0.25m well spent!
Pour encourager les autres. To save lives. To provide justice.
We can have this:
"Pay attention while you are driving because if you kill someone whilst pulling some dodgy overtake you will go to prison for it. Here's the proof "
or this:
"There's no way you'll go to jail for killing people on the road no matter how reckless your driving."
the point is two fold...punishment and deterence.
If there are no/low consequences for willfully driving poorly, then there is little incentive to drive well, which results in more events (which when involving a cyclist, result in the cyclist coming off worse every time).
Whilst I agree that sending a mostly law abiding citizen to jail may be more servere than sending a ''career criminal'' to jail, the courts don't seem eager/allowed to utilize other measures. In this case, the suspension of the sentence could have been ten years, and the driving ban for five. It blows me away that this driver will be able to live a normal life except for not driving for half a year, and be completely in the clear in two years. Maybe even make the suspended sentence for life years, so the drivers knows that they have to lead a perfectly clean life from now on.
Out of interest, what "education" did you have in mind? Do you really believe that a man who has, presumably, passed a driving test doesn't know that what he did was wrong? That he didn't, indeed, know before he did it that it was a stupid risk?
I couldn't personally care less what happens to this loon - I hope he never drives again, and I hope his conscience will ensure that end. But it matters in general that such idiotic behaviour is seen to have bad consequences, because nothing else will induce thinking in the next nuttter in line. Both ends could be achieved quite cheaply, but I guess that ways lies what you wouldcall barbarism. Quite what you call the bullying savagery of many drivers is unclear. Normal, I fear.
absolutely right, just shoot the fucker, costs about £2
Damn right!
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