Driver spared jail after killing cyclist in “momentary lapse of concentration”

But - again, today I'm just trying to see it from the other perspective - if you've done everything to comply with the law (and society normalises this activity and the authorities set the standards bar so this is accessible to all), have done so for time, have got complacent (as most do, repeated activity with no bad consequences / negative feedback) and then "I made a slip and something happened" - how's e.g. banging this person up for life going to help?  Granted - it will presumably deliver a feeling of justice for the relatives - although I'd still be livid we continue to facilitate this occurring.  Without cheerleading for the driver however we make this far too easy / likely so I think e.g. in many cases a life sentence wouldn't be proportionate.

However my main issue is I don't think it will prevent this continuing.

Most drivers think their standard of driving is at least acceptable.  "Major" issues like this are very rare.  I don't think most people will change "normal" behaviour long-term even if there was, say, a much higher detection and conviction rate.  I think we would quickly hit the point of diminishing returns.

I certainly agree that we should try to make driving a more "serious" or "thoughtful" undertaking.  Test more than once a lifetime.  Yes, the law's currently broken when it comes to motoring offenses (e.g. people who have clearly - to us here! - been deliberately negligent or even malicious).  Greatly increased enforcement of existing laws - including the "minor" offenses like phone use and speeding would likely have *some* impact.  But I don't think we can police our way to the roads feeling safe for most people to cycle.

https://cyclingfallacies.com/en/16/higher-standards-of-driving-would-mak...

Longer ban maybe though?

Keep the rest of us a bit safer for longer.

That's what I thought at first too, and I'm still open to considering the possibility, but I have at least two concerns:

1) It's not clear to me that she has proven herself to be a particular threat on the road relative to other drivers. True, she had the bad fortune of destroying a life due to her self-absorbed carelessness, but that has more to do with the randomness of events than with any particular danger she herself poses, again, relative to other drivers.

2) One potential problem with banning people from driving is that (depending on the circumstances) it risks putting substantial burdens on other people who now have to provide transportation and services for the suspended driver. That's not a dispositive point in and of itself, but it's hard to justify any costs and burdens when the punishment doesn't seem to have any significant benefits in the first place.

I agree, I'm not a big fan of custodial sentences. In truth behaviour is not deterred by the the punishment but by the chance of being caught. In most of these cases, I believe, drivers will have exhibited poor driving skills previously that have never been punished. The system has failed when someone is dead or injured and locking up one individual doesn't make cycling safer.
They do need some punishment. In this case I would say something like 1000 hours unpaid work (even that only amounts to giving up weekends for just over a year -perhaps in a job that will bring them in to conflict with drivers like traffic warden or litter picking on a busy road), they should also give up a small percentage of their future income to road safety charities and obviously they should never hold a license again. Honestly, if they were really remorseful they'd probably be volunteering to do all this.

IanMK wrote:

The system has failed when someone is dead or injured and locking up one individual doesn't make cycling safer.

Well said. It's a failure of the system, and punishing one person won't fix it.

IanMK wrote:

They do need some punishment. In this case I would say something like 1000 hours unpaid work (even that only amounts to giving up weekends for just over a year -perhaps in a job that will bring them in to conflict with drivers like traffic warden or litter picking on a busy road), they should also give up a small percentage of their future income to road safety charities and obviously they should never hold a license again. Honestly, if they were really remorseful they'd probably be volunteering to do all this.

I see where you're coming from, and considering this particular driver was in a Range Rover it's hard to feel too much concern for her circumstances. But as a general policy matter it's worth remembering that 1000 (or whatever large number of) hours of unpaid work, salary forfeiture, and a permanently suspended license would be quite calamitous for many people's lives (not to mention the lives of anyone who depends on them). Yes, one person's life has already been destroyed, but destroying more lives won't fix that or prevent more destruction in the future.

Quite calamitous for the driver? What was the consequence for the cyclist was that also calamitous?

It should be a strict liability offence, kill another road-user through inattention and you get to pay someone to transport you (or cycle) for the rest of your life. No if's, but's or wriggling. Maybe then those in charge of vehicles would take more care when driving.

Hamster wrote:

Maybe then those in charge of vehicles would take more care when driving.

No, they won't. That's wishful thinking, unfortunately.

But of course not as calamitous as going to prison. I'm sure even severe non custodial sentences can be adapted to the individual. Actually, I believe that a truly remorseful person could embrace such punishment and grow from it. A bit like enforced karma.

One thousand hours of work is just over six months of a normal full time job, doesn't seem that harsh for the taking of an innocent person's life, which would have been quite calamitous for their family and friends.

The conclusion of this is that no crime involving the death or serious injury of another should be punished.

Driving is a priviledge not a right.

hirsute wrote:

The conclusion of this is that no crime involving the death or serious injury of another should be punished.

Don't have any idea how you find that conclusion in my post.

And, you think is no punishment here? Living the rest of your life with the knowledge that you killed someone is punishment. Having your license suspended for two years is punishment. Having a conviction on your record for the rest of your life is punishment. Being prosecuted, regardless of the outcome, is punishment. Having your name and face and story plastered all over the news and social media is punishment. Do you really think that if you were to go through all of that you'd feel you'd gotten off free?

ejocs wrote:

Having your license suspended for two years is punishment.

It isn't. Or, at least, that isn't how it should be used or viewed. It's a risk reduction measure.

Those two things--punishment and a risk reduction measure--aren't mutually exclusive. Putting someone in prison, for example, is clearly both. Indeed, all formal punishment should be a risk reduction measure, else there's no way to justify it.

In this case, though, the withdrawal of the license to drive because you've demonstrated lack of competence is not a punishment, any more than refusing to give a licence in the first place because you failed your test is a punishment.

Punishments can also be risk reduction, but that doesn't make all risk reduction measures punishments.

I'm not following the distinction you're making. Or, to put it more precisely, I don't see what's at stake in the distinction you're making. How does the analysis or our understanding of the situation improve if we accept your categorization over mine?

Better yet, I'm happy to drop the label "punishment" and just call it a negative consequence (that is, a consequence that the driver herself will experience negatively, as something she and other prospective wrongdoers would prefer to avoid). The point I was trying to make when I called it punishment in the first place was simply that, even without jail time or a longer driving ban, the driver has already suffered a great number of negative consequences of her behavior and is unlikely to feel that she has gotten off free. I made that point not to beg sympathy for her but to try to explain that those negative consequences she has already incurred ought to go a long way toward satisfying deterrence and retribution without our investing in enhanced formal sanctions against her.

What's at stake is that treating it as a 'punishment' bolsters the narrative that driving is a 'right' which has been taken away. It's not - it's a privilege which is conditional on your demonstrating your competence and suitability to be allowed to do it. The loss of that privilege simply reflects that you're no longer considered safe to be behind the wheel.

The idea that driving is a 'right' and removing it a 'punishment' plays into the epidemic of 'exceptional hardship' defences allowing people to continue driving with humungous numbers of points on their licences, and magistrates carefully stopping short of enough points to push people past the limit, because taking away that 'right' is seen as almost unnatural, and something to be done only in the most extreme of cases.

Hmm, I don't see it that way--who, for example, would object to calling it "punishment" when a child's privilege of playing with a toy is taken away as a consequence of the child's bad behavior / demonstrated inability to play with the toy responsibly? In any event, as I said, I'm happy to drop the disputed label as it doesn't matter at all to my point.

I should point out that I'm not wholly opposed to severe driving bans, only those that don't serve any evident purpose (and I've explained above why I don't think this one would, because this driver's behavior seems to have been unexceptional and within the boundaries of inevitable human faultiness). But when it comes to the repeated violation of bright line laws--Don't use your phone! Don't run red lights! Don't close pass!--I think there's a much stronger justification for them because now we've got 1) a driver who's proven himself to be a particular menace and from whom the society needs particular protection and 2) deterrence has a better chance of success because we're targetting behavior that people can clearly avoid--there's a bright line between using your phone and not using your phone, between running red lights or stopping for red lights--rather than vague and unrealistic admonitions to pay perfect attention at all times. There will still be costs to implementing severe driving bans in these cases, and those costs should still be taken into account, but I think it's probable that they can often be outwieghed by the benefits.

I'm with you on some of this.  I think we're much more likely to see a bigger effect (but also a *ton* of other benefits) from moving beyond our current model.  We seem to take crashes in isolation and mostly deal with them as a legal matter.

I suggest a "health and safety" model (actually a "sustainable safety" model - much more than "vision zero") would be more appropriate.

Though I don't believe we can police our way to "subjectively safe roads" we can certainly do more.  We shouldn't discard the legal side.  Clearly some people have intent or are "criminally negligent".  On this I think what people here are objecting to is the "desert" part.  Humans want to feel that justice has been done even if they are not directly affected by the process.  That includes punishment - even when they can't agree on what it is.  "Voluntary" things are rarely felt to be punishment - so the "she was really cut up about it!" doesn't satisfy.

Unfortunately "cyclists" are a minority so the majority opinion *is* as you suggest - that losing your licence is a severe "punishment" not merely a logical consequence / reasonable safety precaution.

chrisonatrike wrote:

Humans want to feel that justice has been done

Yeah, I think justice (and fairness and desert and lots of other things most people hold dear) is a false and dangerous concept, so I often have a hard time dealing with normal people.😅😅

I take it you're familiar with https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes? If not, I think you'd really like it.

ejocs wrote:

chrisonatrike wrote:

Humans want to feel that justice has been done

Yeah, I think justice (and fairness and desert and lots of other things most people hold dear) is a false and dangerous concept, so I often have a hard time dealing with normal people.😅😅

I strongly advise staying out of politics.  Or public life in general unless you can disguise that pretty well!

ejocs wrote:

I take it you're familiar with https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes? If not, I think you'd really like it.

Yup, thanks - aware but always a good recommendation.  I was raised in the age of Richard's Bicycle Book but in the last decade I've retrained on David Hembrow, Bicycle Dutch, Ranty Highwayman, KatsDekker, As Easy as Riding a Bike, the Alternative Department for Transport, the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, BikeSnobNYC (who might chime more with you) etc.

You wrote

"Yes, one person's life has already been destroyed, but destroying more lives won't fix that or prevent more destruction in the future."

So what is anyone supposed to conclude other than "no crime involving the death or serious injury of another should be punished."

Or perhaps you could explain whether someone who takes the life of another by careless driving or greater should be punished (if at all)? And what the punishment should be ? (Given your previous restrictions of "but destroying more lives won't fix that or prevent more destruction in the future")

I already explained at length that I don't think additional punishment is justified in this case based on the particular characteristics of this case, because the costs to society would outweigh any benefits, again, in this case. I also illustrated the ways in which this particular driver has already been punished, and acknowledged that I remain open to the possibility of further increasing her driving ban (although at this point I'm skeptical of the benefits and wary of the costs). All a very far cry from no punishment ever for someone who causes death or severe injury.

In general, if we're going to punish someone, we should be able to point to specific ways that it will, at an acceptable cost, decrease the amount of unwanted behavior in society through some combination of 1) incapacitating a wrongdoer who presents a unique threat to the society (which I explained I don't think this driver does because the tragedy in this case seems to have been the result of the same sort of vaguely negligent driving that many are guilty of every day--that doesn't make it right, but it does mean that we don't make society safer by removing this one person from it) and 2) deterring future wrongdoing (which I explained I don't think will happen in this case, again because the wrongdoing here seems to have been based on vague negligence rather than an overt bright-line violation, and because the kind of wrongdoing here causes severe harm (and would therefore lead to the kind of formal punishment we're debating) only in the statistical aggregate and will continue to be seen as non-risky from the perspective of any given driver). Since additional punishment here wouldn't seem to produce any benefits but would incur not-insignificant costs, then, I don't think additional punishment is justified in this case.

ejocs wrote:

What does bother me is that the driver in this case was apparently just doing what multitudes of other drivers do every single fucking day--treating a speeding 2,000kg death machine as if it's an inconsequential toy--and hardly anyone fucking cares. Society doesn't fucking care. The authorities don't fucking care. Lives are constantly sacrificed so entitled kings and queens of the road can use social media and do their make-up and eat their take-out and rush to wait in line a couple of seconds sooner at the upcoming red light, and nobody who matters fucking cares. This is an eminently preventable category of death and destruction, if only people would fucking care--but they refuse, and it's infuriating.

^THIS

As exemplified by her Barristers own, standard apologist Bollocks  “a momentary lapse of concentration”

Fuck. Off.

Longer maximum sentences for causing death while driving! Huh! Yeah!

What are they good for?

Absolutely nothin'.

Careless/dangerous driving I despise, 'cos it means destruction of innocent lives ... but does anyone have any evidence the current maximum of 14 years (or 9 1/3 for guilty plea) has ever been awarded?

Possibly it might marginally increase the sentences in a few of the most egregious cases.  Overall I think this is mostly beside the point.  We should be working to prevent these from happening (road safety review people!).  And more importantly making it *feel* safe and convenient to walk or cycle so that people do.

Well - that should be scaled to fit the expected incidence of these over a lifetime's driving, no?  Because we only test once.  So probably you can have 0.0001 or something (maybe a lot higher?).  So not zero.

For all I know that might actually coincide with the average number of faults driving examiners miss of course making this all "balance".

I'm sure the comprehensive road safety review will be suggesting that we both test (or have "refreshers") more than once per lifetime.  And that we look at the evidence standards / process in court for these offenses.

In my experience DVSA examiners miss very, very few driving faults during a test.  Much more relevant is the weight they are compelled to give to individual faults, 'minor' or 'serious' or 'dangerous'.  Senior managers in the agency seem fixated with giving the candidate the benefit of any doubt in almost all circumstances.  You may think this is to minimise the number of tests, and therefore the number of examiners employed.  I couldn't possibly comment.