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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Cardiff driver who killed cyclist deliberately veered onto wrong side of road to scare girlfriend during argument
A Cardiff driver has admitted causing a cyclist’s death by dangerous driving after he deliberately veered onto the wrong side of the road to scare his girlfriend while they were having an argument.
Wales Online reports that Paul Garrett was hit by Eurico Costa on the B4258 Pencisely Road in Llandaff, Cardiff, just before 1.50pm on October 6 last year.
Garrett suffered serious injuries and was taken to the University Hospital of Wales, but died later that day.
Witnesses described an “aggressive piece of driving” in which Costa swerved onto the wrong side of the road and mounted the pavement.
The court heard he had lost his temper during a row with his girlfriend, tearing down a sun visor and then deliberately veering across the road in a bid to scare her.
Stephen Harrington, who was driving in the opposite direction, said: “As [the car] came up the hill it swerved on to my side of the road. It was quite a violent swerve.
“All I can remember is [the car] speeding up and then a big bang. I remember something flying in the air.”
Police Sergeant Ben Davies also witnessed the collision. He said the car’s wheels spun and described Costa’s driving as “extremely aggressive”.
He said: “He hit the cyclist up into the air. It looked like about 10ft high.”
As Costa and his girlfriend got out of the car, witnesses said she screamed at him: "What have you done – oh my god what have you done?"
Costa told police the sun was in his eyes and he could “barely see”. He said he grabbed the sun visor, which came away in his hand, and before he knew what had happened he was on the wrong side of the road.
Forensic investigator PC Christopher Street said the sun would have been coming from the left and the prosecution argued the visor would not have been needed.
Costa pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving.
Judge Williams said: “The court deals too often with deaths needlessly caused on the roads. The terrible truth here is that you did this to scare your girlfriend or to force from her an answer to your grievances.
“You gave no thought to anyone else on the road, let alone anybody as vulnerable as Mr Garrett was. My sentence must reflect the vulnerability of cyclists.”
Costa was jailed for four-and-a-half years and banned from driving for five years.
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.
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I should get onto the Guinness Book of Records people then, as they have the world record slowest heart rate for a healthy person down as 26bpm,...
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Add Scotland to that list. You won't even find a dashcam reporting portal in Scotland either so you can forget that also.
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And years ago Laura Trott, Daniel King, Joanne Rowsell, as theyvwere after Olympic gold, got lots of being and Jaguars, when Jags were very...
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I must admit I find it odd. I assumed a cyclist had run into a bus driver, fallen off and as a consequence, died (as in "run over by a bus driver")...
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I made a complaint within an hour of the story being published. I have zero faith that they will amend anything....
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Especially children, near a school, one might imagine? By a bus driver driving children to school?...
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TBF I think that's before she saw the light and got on her bike. Not so great if her views have been informed by Mr. Briggs though.
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One less thing to clutter up your jersey pockets no? Though difficult to retrieve in a hurry...
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31 comments
Need to move some culpability onto the seller of vehicles as well, maybe ensuring you at least get shown a licence when selling privately. This won't stop the whole criminals who do business with criminals thing but it may cut down the supply of vehicles to people without licences.
Maximum available prison sentence is 14 yrs... 4 yrs seems relatively low.
Not to mention here is a man who goes about trying to frighten his partner by driving dangerously.
What would you have to do to get the maximum sentence?
I would be fascinated to hear from an expert how judges decide on what sentence to give.
Ush dude, what exactly is wrong with wanting revenge? Pretty normal feeling I'd imagine loads of people experience when something bad happens to people they love.
Vengence is pretty much ingrained in most religions.
If you could honesty turn the other cheek in a situation like this then whatever, you're made of different stuff to me.
In the context of being sent to prison, it absolutely is a 'trend', and seems to be a trope imported from the US - where it actually happens on a scandalous and horrific scale (I don't _think_ it happens here very much...I hope). Not a trend I care for.
It just seems...trivialising of the reality. Which, after all, in this context, involves the most vicious and predatory enjoying themselves, while the victims are usually the most vulnerable who have more-likely-than-not commited the least heinous offences.
Even if you aren't worried about upsetting rape victims, even on it's own terms, why would you [you = those who express this wish, not, er, the poster I'm quoting] want the most predatory prisoners to enjoy themselves by getting to carry on doing what they probably do outside?
I'd prefer to hope he gets knocked down by a prison van in a one-in-a-million freak prison yard accident [driven by a lousy driver who'd just finished a pathetically-inadaquate driving ban]. Along with whoever wrote the sentencing guidelines.
(Again, not directed at 'you')
An actual scumbag had an actual tantrum in an actual car and actually killed an actual cyclist. That really happened. And they'll be able to drive again in a few years.
A poster makes a glib remark about the sort of attention they get while banged-up. In no way is that poster guaranteeing, or influencing, or, really, hoping, that the scumbag will receive that sort of attention. It's throwaway text, and it's in jest.
More posters log in to address the latter than the actual shitshow he was referring to.
I think they (myself included) need to cop on and get a bit of perspective more than the poster who made the 'joke'.
I understand your arguments about the normalising, and it not being a very nice topic to joke about.
But when it comes to scales of offense, I'm about a 9 on the scumbag squashing a cyclist, and 1 on 'prison jokes'. I'm more offended by posters ignoring the actual horrific event referred to, and registering their offense at a 'joke' made about something that won't happen.
So it's all perspective. People might think they're claiming the moral high ground; others might think they should sit the fuck down and stop obscuring the view.
But it's not about "scale of offense". I don't know why you think it is.
Fact is, objecting to the justice system's tolerance of lethal irresponsible stupidity is, unfrotunately, unlikely to have much effect (do you think the judge, or whoever writes the sentencing guidelines - because someone is bound to point out the judge is constrained by them - is reading any of these forums?). It makes me angry, but posting about that anger, repeatedly, doesn't make it any better. For the record, I don't think someone with the temperament of this driver should have been allowed to drive in the first place [a car is a lethal weapon and clearly some people are not psychologically fit to be allowed one], and that even now he only gets a 5 year driving ban is simply ridiculous.
But the 'prison rape jokes' thing tends to be people who read these forums and who (I suspect) aren't immune to reason (unlike the murderous drivers) but just say things like that from habit.
I don't quite get why you think only one topic can be discussed at a time. A comment made on this thread can be discussed on this thread.
I don't, which is precisely my point on proportionality.
Just that more posts have been made on this about the dodgy, un-pc joke than about the horrific event that prompted it, which depresses the shit out of me.
Isn't prison sex not about sexuality? It's just about whatever you can get?
If a member of my family was killed by a human toilet like this guy, then I'd want the remainder of his life to be life something out Dante's seventh circle.
Where, in the name of god, in all the previous conversation did you get the idea that there was any sexy talk? Seriously?!
Where do you get the idea that rape, whether in prison, or elsewhere is anything to do with sexuality and anything other than violence?!
Yeah, whatever moral big man.
I can somehow undestand the logic behind the 4 year only imprisonment as there was no planning or even intention to kill somebody. But under no circumstances can I understand why he didn't receive a lifetime ban on driving. He is a guy that if he gets annoyed he may drive suddenly to the other side of the road. This guy http://road.cc/content/news/225396-indefinite-cycling-ban-jobless-builde... received a lifetime cycling ban for pinching asses on a bike. Would have he received a lifetime driving ban had he been driving a car? Courts unfortunately still see bicycle as toys for big boys.
Hate to bring up Mr Alliston, but...Manslaughter???
Pah, you know the rules, one rule for motorists, one set of rules for people on bikes which works both ways in fact when doing something wrong and being on the end of foul play.
There's so many examples of this like Alliston when compared to motorists he'd be lucky to get a £60 fine for a missing brake under the rules applied to other motorists who kill (construction and use) and indeed like this killers like Helen Measures and Gail Purcell get let off completely.
The justice system is bent as fuck and yet we have ministers and the media wanting to bend it even further against people on bikes.
'Judge Williams said: “The court deals too often with deaths needlessly caused on the roads. The terrible truth here is that you did this to scare your girlfriend or to force from her an answer to your grievances.
“You gave no thought to anyone else on the road, let alone anybody as vulnerable as Mr Garrett was. My sentence must reflect the vulnerability of cyclists.” '
Not very vulnerable then
Appalling sentencing, both the prison time and disqualification. Some of these convicts should be getting lifetime driving bans. By all means let them appeal against it, but that may generate some meaningful discussion in the courts about the priviledges of driving.
I trust that when this worthless pile of filth gets out of prison, Mr Garret’s family will impose a fitting and just punishment.
The judge may as well have apologised to Costa for having to impose a custodial sentence because of his rotten luck in having killed someone as a result of his actions, even a cyclist.
A tad over two years and he will be out, which seems a small price to pay for his lunatic behaviour.
Could someone explain to me why this murdering idiot is going to be allowed behind the wheel of a death cage again?
It is incredulous. Judges etc are under an illusion about the necessity of driving. What happened to it being a privilege?
It could be a 'policy decision', has anyone been given a lifetime ban?
I'm not sure that anyone ever has been given a lifetime driving ban in this country. Five years is pretty lengthy. But the facts of the case are damning. It does beg the question as to whether this guy is fit to drive at all. There is no 'right' to drive. The whole issue of sentencing for driving offences does need to be looked at again. My feeling is that driving bands could be more lengthy and that there should be more use made of compulsory retesting for more serious offences, with those offenders only being allowed licences again if they are able to prove a change in behaviour/attitude.
A quick scan of the sentencing guidelines shows that the ban is concurrent to the sentence, so is not really a ban at all since theoretically he won't need a license in jail.
It does also say the licence is only granted subject to an extended retest. I'm sure the tester could find something to fail on...
I thought the driving ban in this instance would start on the person leaving prison. But I may be wrong. An extended test would hopefully include a focus on vulnerable road users. It's worth remembering though that an insurance company would charge this guy through the nose for even the most underpowered of vehicles, which would certainly be a powerful tool in him ever owning a car legally. I say legally because there is a lot of evidence showing that the numbskulls who are guilty of the worst driving offences are often highly likely to drive illegally, without licence or insurance. It's hard to stop someone if they're determined to drive again, no matter whether it's legal or not.
What an utter cretin, I hope he spends every day of his time in jail with a very sore a**e.
The guy is indeed a cretin but you want him to be repeatedly raped as a punishment?
This is the second time in about a month that I've seen a comment calling for sexual violence as retaliation for dangerous driving. This classless, non-thinking response is beneath all of us.
I'm sure that StraelGuy is merely pointing out that prison toilet paper is not the soft kind advertised by fluffy Koala bears.
Exactly right Mungecrundle. I believe it's that horrible scratchy stuff that's more akin to tracing paper than actual toilet paper
.
Agreed. But these sorts of calls for anal rape are a common part of anglo-saxon culture. Arguably a US trope. It's very weird. @StraelGuy seek professional help, or attempt to find some sort of inner peace. Or just stop mixing up your fantasies with the justice system.
So... Yeah, blame the actual Anglo-Saxons, via the Vikings... Ancient Greeks and Romans, the Manchus...
Actual man-on-man prison-style attention, but in a war context, is as old as writing itself, and widespread. Buggering foes, and making jokes about it, is not some modern phenomenon, or the preserve of Yank prisons or Whitey-in-the-closet.
There are probably 50,000 year-old drawings in an undiscovered cave somewhere that allude to dropping whatever passed for soap back then.
Doesn't necessarily make it acceptable here, but it isn't the trend some think it is. It was ever thus.
What the f*** are you on about? It's common usage to refer to English-speaking world and the inheritors of its unique culture, which among other aspects includes the propagation of the culture of your traditional madrassas: the public school.
I look forward (not) to your quotes from the sagas extolling anal rape. I know nothing of the Manchus so will have to take your sober and considered word for it.
It's cultural acceptance at the moment is largely confined to the British and American public and some of the less civilized outposts of Waziristan.
To echo your own argument, there are probably 50,000 year old references to paedophaelia, incest, murder, cannibalism and just general nastiness. So what? Anal rape revenge by proxy or otherwise is a very strange desire.
Again, if you find yourselves wishing this, get some help. There is something wrong with you.
Backatcha, and there's no need to self-censor that particular Anglo-Saxon reference. I won't melt at mere text on a page.
You're muddling up Anglo-Saxons with 'the English-speaking world' and then getting indignant about people not following entirely. My point is that you seem to think this is in some way the domain of Brits, Yanks, whoever else you're clumsily labelling as 'Anglo-Saxon'. You're wrong.
The actual acts, and jokes about them, were widespread and commonplace in cultures far-removed from public schools, prisons or whichever other institutions you seem to be blaming, no matter how much you want it to be true. There are specific references to male rape and jokes about them in texts from ancient civilisations (hence the ones I mentioned) and gender-ambiguous war rape in stuff as old as the Old Testament.
Plenty wrong with British public schools, American prisons, and posts on the Internet, but you're barking up the wrong tree here.
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