Drivers who kill now face life behind bars

Sevenfold wrote:

It would make more sense to increase the minimum sentence for causing death/serious injury by careless/dangerous driving. The average jail time is only 4 years for dangerous driving. Raise the minimum prison time & bring in a mandatory 10 year to life driving ban would make far more realistic sentencing.

"We will introduce a new offence of causing serious injury by careless driving, punishable by imprisonment, to fill a gap in the law andreflect the seriousness of some of the injuries suffered by victims in this category of case.”

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/oct/14/drivers-who-kill-may-now-fac...

I have the dubious pleasure of Raab being my local MP, perhaps I ought to send him a whole bunch of stuff to look at wrt various cycling-related prosections, tho' one would hope 9000 consulations would have covered it...

wycombewheeler wrote:

I'd rather see lifetime driving bans as the starting point than life sentences as the end point.

Exactly.  It's all a matter of perspective and the system needs to be changed to enable a jury exercising leniency to have a reasonable option that protects _all_ the rest of the road users by removing the temporary, licensed right to operate dangerous machinery from people that have shown themselves either to be simply incompetent or actively malicious.

wycombewheeler wrote:

Detection low Conviction low Sentencing not up to current maximums anyway I'd rather see lifetime driving bans as the starting point than life sentences as the end point.

Lifetime bans would be I think a greater deterrent. And a compulsory prison sentence for anyone caught driving whilst banned.

Whilst vengeance/justice would do a little to ease the pain of losing a family member what many bereaved families have is a strong desire for no-one else to be experiencing what they are - its why so many of them devote so much time to campaigning for road safety. The idea of a killer driver leaving jail and killing again would be acutely painful to them - hence life bans required.

Peowpeowpeowlasers wrote:

I'd like to see much less use of "exceptional hardship" when someone has reached or exceeded 12 points. 

This. I never understood it anyway; surely the point of a punishment is that it is hard?

burtthebike wrote:

Since almost all offences are prosecuted under careless driving, and courts rarely convict on dangerous driving, this will have zero effect in deterring the worst kind of driving, and that's the point.  The government can pretend that it has listened and can introduce harsh new penalties that will rarely if ever be applied, that won't make any difference, and certainly won't make our roads safer.

Cynical posturing and hypocrisy.

But surely the new offence of causing serious injury through careless driving is an attempt to address this.

burtthebike wrote:

Since almost all offences are prosecuted under careless driving, and courts rarely convict on dangerous driving, this will have zero effect in deterring the worst kind of driving, and that's the point.  The government can pretend that it has listened and can introduce harsh new penalties that will rarely if ever be applied, that won't make any difference, and certainly won't make our roads safer.

Cynical posturing and hypocrisy.

Some _are_ convicted for 'dangerous' though. And even those at present often get very lenient sentences. So I think it's an improvement. Of course, harsher punishments might make already-biased juries even less likely to convict.

Really, though, I want harsher sentences purely for reasons of emotional satisfaction and feelings about justice. I'm tired of seeing sentences that imply the life of anyone not in a car is of lesser value.

But I am still convinced safety can only come from better infrastructure.