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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)£55 fine and three points for driver who left cyclist with broken leg, elbow & weeks in hospital
Cycle campaigning charity CTC has strongly criticised Preston magistrates after they handed down a £55 fine to motorist who caused a crash that left a cyclist with a broken leg, fractured elbow and soft tissue damage.
The driver, 49-year-old Thomas McAteer, from Grimsargh, near Preston, admitted a charge of careless driving, according to the Lancashire Evening Post. On November 14 last year, McAteer hit the cyclist – who is not named in the reports – on D’Urton Lane, Preston.
The court heard that McAteer had intended to turn left at the junction with Haighton Green Lane, but failed to give way. He hit the rider who was travelling ahead on the road.
Prosecutors said, “The cyclist was knocked off his bike and sustained a broken femur, a fractured elbow and soft tissue damage to his back.
“He also spent a number of weeks in hospital due to the seriousness of his injuries.”
The road was dry and the weather described as “fine”.
McAteer was ordered to pay a £55 fine, £43 costs and a victim surcharge of £20. He was also handed three penalty points.
Rhia Weston, of the CTC, said the decision was “ridiculous” and the rider could sue for compensation in a civil case.
“Unfortunately I’m not surprised,” she said. “This is extremely common and one of the reasons why we set up our Road Justice Campaign.
“Why was the guy charged with careless driving? It should be dangerous driving.
“He is putting another person’s life in danger.”
The average fine for careless driving in 2011 was £138. The maximum punishment magistrates can give is a £5,000 fine and nine penalty points.
Weston said, “When you compare what he got to what he could have got, it’s absolutely absurd. £55 is laughable. It is ridiculous for the amount of damage he has caused.”
The CTC’s Road Justice Campaign aims to fix the justice system by pressuring the police, the prosecution services, the courts and the law itself to improve the handling of bad driving and bad drivers.
Why are sentences lenient?
These cases are depressingly common. The CTC’s campaigns director Roger Geffen puts the problem down to a combination of factors including the fuzzy boundary between careless and dangerous driving; the reluctance of juries to convict for dangerous driving; and the resulting unwillingness of the Crown Prosecution Service to try and bring a charge of dangerous driving.
Writing about the Mary Bowers and Sam Harding cases last year, Geffen said, “In neither case can one simply blame the police or Crown Prosecution Service for the failed outcomes. In the Mary Bowers case, the CPS did bring a dangerous driving prosecution, only to have it rejected by a jury, i.e. by ordinary members of the public. Similarly in the Sam Harding case, the CPS didn’t really have the option of bringing a dangerous (or even a careless) driving prosecution, given that a jury would almost certainly have been persuaded that opening a car door doesn’t count as driving.”
Sam Harding was killed after Kenan Aydogdu opened his car door into the cyclist’s path, causing Sam to fall into the path of a following bus. Aydogdu’s car had tinted windows that reduced visibility to 17% of normal levels. He was acquitted of manslaughter.
“It’s true that [the CPS] could have prosecuted Aydogdu with offences relating to the tinted window or with opening a car door when it was unsafe to do so - but neither offence would have attracted more than a small penalty at most,” said Geffen.
“The Mary Bowers raises much wider issues. CTC has long been concerned that the law, and the CPS’s prosecution policies, fail to distinguish clearly between “dangerous” and “careless” driving. Faced with a fuzzy boundary between the two – and with the thought “there but for the grace of God” also in the back of their minds – it often seems that jurors opt for the more lenient offence, in order to spare the driver what they feel might be an unjustly harsh prison sentence.”
The CTC continues to campaign for more approriate sentences for drivers who kill and injure cyclists and pedestrians. The recent Audrey Fyfe case demonstrates that there is strong public feeling that sentences are often too light.
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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45 comments
Assault on the cyclist causing grievous bodily harm with a heavy weapon? If the driver didn't happen to be driving a car, but instead pounced on the cyclist with a simliar sized weapon, would the CPS treat it differently?
It costs around £260 per day to keep someone in hospital (I am sure there will be other figures quoted, just using what seems to be quoted regularly on the web) So the "number of weeks" lets say 2 on the conservative side, would have cost the taxpayer £3640, why not fine the driver at least the cost of the hospital stay?
The driver may well be facing a hefty increase in his next renewal premium, even if he has protected NCD, if he is offered insurance at all. His insurer will certainly be facing a substantial (large five figures, very possibly low six figures) civil claim in respect of personal injury, loss of earnings, possible costs of adapting the claimant's home if the injuries are likely to be permanent or long standing, and so on.
The Newcastle office of the DWP (the Compensation Recovery Unit) would also be chasing up medical costs and social security benefits payable as a result of the accident from the insurer of the at fault driver (link).
So while the quantum of the judicial result is ridonkulous, the principle of fault has been clearly established and the claimant will eventually be put right, well, right-ish anyway. Even if we end up paying for the driver's carelessness (ahem) through higher premiums.
This is all well and good but it's punishment by proxy.
When people are 'careless' and cause injury to another person then they need to be held to account fully.
As a person (cyclist, motorist, etc..) you have a responsibility to the people around you. If you fail in that responsibility through carelessness, ignorance, vindictivness etc then you should be held to account, with sentencing factoring in the impact on the victim(s).
This type of sentencing is a joke. What do we need to do to force a change/review in the guidelines?
Where does the money for the fine go? Is this into the governments coffers? If so, I don't really care about the size of the fine. The damages the cyclist will get from suing him in the civil case should be sizeable....there is some doubling up on the court costs, but the evidence in the criminal case should make it cut and dried, and the dummy gets lumbered with the court costs.
I think the issue of the sentence/what the charge is in cases is more pressing where there is a death as a result of dangerous, or careless driving because the civil case should provide compensation. This of course hits us all in the pockets if the insurance company has to pay out though.
It would be useful, for the benefit of balance to hear back what the cyclist received as a result of his civil case and whether he pursues this option (if not, why not).
Yet another case of leniency,what a suprise
The fact is the government,the judiciary are in the pockets of the motoring and oil lobbies and multi nationals
In their bent logic they believe giving justice to cyclists will result in a decline in motoring use as drivers will be reticent to act like the arrogant untouchable scum they are
Also they believe cyclists have no place on the road anyway,its the British disease of roads being for motorized vehicles,this attitude is entrenched in society from top to bottom so is it any suprised this state sanctioned leniency in sentencing is dished out by the courts despite the aggravating circumstances?
But if it were that Tory scum Andrew Mitchell or Bozo Johnson seriously injured im sure the courts would be more accomodating in jailing the motorist
Oh no poor old Thomas has to pay a total of £118 that’s terrible shall we have a whip round or get the bug eyed twonk Bongo to write a charity song for him? To save all of this in future why not just let them off and that way they don’t have to go to court and waste the taxpayers money.
It's the age of austerity and I think it's time for some money saving tips.
£55 for this, and £35 for the taxi driver who killed a teenager a few months back.
If people would just stop hogging the middle lane, they'd save the £100 fine for that and be able to spend the money on killing one person and maiming another - and still have £10 left to put towards a parking fine.
Think before you piss your hard-earned money away on pointless things like using the wrong lane - spend it on doing some proper damage instead.
It's expensive being a motorist, you know. As soon as you buy a car you're pretty much destitute and have to live on crusts and wear horsehair shirts. With only a little bit of thought you can make the few quid you've got left to pay your motoring fines go that bit further.
So remember, when you're looking into your empty wallet wondering how you'll be able to afford to drive another mile without the hassle of thinking about what's going on around you, you can get far better value for money by running down cyclists than you can by irritating motorists.
As the government campaign itself says: "Think!" Think what you can do with what you spend on fines. They're a tax, after all. And if you're going to get taxed, get your money's worth!
Judges shouldn't be allowed to smoke crack before handing out sentances
Until the government sort this out and ensure drivers are held accountable they can bang on about getting people to take up riding bikes all they want, it's just politicians bullshit!
Makes me mad as hell, if you want to murder someone wait till they're riding a bike then run 'em over with your car. You can claim you need your licence to keep your job.
A much better punishment would a 5 - 10 year driving ban, tell the motorist to get a bike and see they like being threatened every day by loonatic drivers, so called professional drivers are the worst of the lot; closely followed by BMW drivers. .............Grrrrrrrrrrrr!
i refer you to the other article where a cyclist assaulted a driver.
If the CPS doesn't get this sorted i dread to think what the outcome might be.
The legal system does not protect vulnerable road users!!!
"CTC has long been concerned that the law, and the CPS’s prosecution policies, fail to distinguish clearly between “dangerous” and “careless” driving."
Isnt dangerous driving doing so in a way as to be clearly endangering other road users, i.e. excessive speed in built up areas. vs careless driving, not quite looking properly.
Both can 'be' dangerous but one is done so with wanton disregard for others (and i suppose this is where the argument is).
The problem is, plenty of people in life are careless and society (as a whole) wont stand for normal people being put in prison for being a bit dim and useless.
what a surprise ... NOT
If I walked down a street pionting a gun at passersby while idly playingwith the trigger the legal system would take a very dim view of such careless behaviour. However, if I careless run a cyclist over while playing with the radio.......... apaerently that's alright then, honest mistake and all that!
Just promise not to do it again. I don't see a difference between being killed with gun or killed with a car, your still dead! Due to someones wreckless behaviour.
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