Pitiful sentence for lorry driver....

Jimfrandisco

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bradford/8332527.stm

Wallace1492

Disgraceful.

benjboy

That lorry driver is scum and i hope he gets r!p*& in jail. :twisted:

rich_e

That's truely disgraceful.

I thought it was just going to be the typical case of a Lorry Driver having killed a Cyclist and gotting a pitiful scentence for it.. But to have killed someone, taken their bike and driven thirty minutes to try and hide it, that's unforgivable. :x

Two years is a joke!

Soul Boy

FFS disgraceful :evil:

"Mr Spink was seen clinging on to the windscreen wipers of Stubbs's vehicle to try and prevent being dragged under.

The jury cleared him of the more serious charge of causing death by dangerous driving but found him guilty of careless driving and perverting the course of justice".

And if you caught yesterdays evening standard:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/ ... y-lorry.do

It all goes to prove that the law is an ar5e.

Eau Rouge

Isn't a 2 year jail sentence quite a lot for a careless driving charge? I suspect most of that time will be for the PtCoJ conviction actually.

(not saying it should be that low, just that a few months is usually the "going rate" for killing someone with a motor vehicle)

Soul Boy

Probably par for the course (in respect of careless driving), but considering the circumstances, the poor cyclist clinging to the windscreen wipers, then the callous act of driving miles to dump his bike, I think this one got off lightly

MadammeMarie

The charge should be manslaughter, but this is not even that. THIS IS MURDER!!!! What a scumbag! :evil:

Jamey

What's the point of taking the bike 30 miles away if you're going to leave the corpse at the scene?

jedster

What's the point of taking the bike 30 miles away if you're going to leave the corpse at the scene

As I remember the suggestion was that he didnt realise that he'd ran over the cyclist but heard a scraping noise and stopped at a lay by down the road to investigate. He was spotted removing the bike from under the front of his truck.

So obviously then he phoned an ambulance and headed back up the road to see if he had left a badly injured person on the road? No. His first thought was not for an injured person but for himself. He drove off and tried to hide the bike. For all that he knew, not returning to the scene/reporting the incident could have delayed an ambulance and cost a life.

The sentence aside, this man should never be allowed to drive again. He is clearly temprementally unsuitable for any role in which he is responsible for other people's safety.

Chicane-UK

So let me get this straight.. you kill someone and deliberately try and conceal the evidence, and not even show an apeth of remorse... and you go to jail for two years.

WTF has our legal system come to?! How is this not a national outrage?

Jamey

He was found guilty of two things:

1) Careless Driving (not Dangerous Driving, which would have been a more serious charge).
2) Perverting the Course of Justice.

The first charge, careless driving, is not allowed to carry a jail sentence because it's not serious enough. We'll come back to that in a minute.

The second charge (perverting...) is what resulted in his jail sentence, but again perverting isn't a charge that typically carries much jail time.

Now, back to the first charge... They initially tried to do him for Dangerous Driving which can be a fairly serious charge (as it can be linked with "causing death by...") but that charge was dismissed and downgraded to careless driving which, because it's not as serious, can't be linked to causing death and doesn't carry jail time.

In order for the Dangerous Driving charge to have been dismissed in court there must either have been no evidence or there must have been evidence to the contrary.

Now we know this guy tried to move the evidence and that's despicable, but we don't know what caused the initial accident. For all we know it could have been the cyclist's fault. I'm not saying this was definitely the case, I'm just saying we don't know for sure and if there wasn't enough evidence to convict him of Dangerous Driving then you can only go by the charges that relate to what he did AFTER the accident (ie moving evidence).

Although, having said that, there WAS enough evidence to convict him of careless driving so it sounds to me like the evidence pointed to the fact that with regard to the initial accident then it wasn't a clear cut case of him being completely in the wrong. Otherwise the same evidence that convicted him of Careless Driving would have been enough to convict him of Dangerous Driving, I would have thought.

Basically what I'm saying hinges on the fact that there was enough evidence to convict him of Careless Driving but the same evidence wasn't substantial enough to convict him of Dangerous Driving, so either it wasn't completely his fault or the evidence wasn't very good but the latter of those would probably have led to problems even convicting him of Careless Driving I would have thought.

Obviously everything that then happened afterwards with regard to him moving the bike was completely, 100% him being in the wrong but that's only covered by the Perverting charge and so can't carry much jail time, I think.

Mainly (I'd assume) because his reason for perverting justice was to avoid capture himself and since they caught him fairly swiftly there wasn't a great deal of success in his perverting, so not much changed because of it - IE he went to court at pretty much the same time he would have done if he hadn't perverted justice so not much justice was perverted.

All of this is aside from the man's personal character which is clearly pretty nasty but you can't charge someone with being nasty.

Soul Boy

Chicane-UK wrote:

So let me get this straight.. you kill someone and deliberately try and conceal the evidence, and not even show an apeth of remorse... and you go to jail for two years.

WTF has our legal system come to?! How is this not a national outrage?

Moral of the story, if you want to kill someone, do it with a motor vehicle. Sentances are laughable, if prosecuted at all :roll:

Eau Rouge

Chicane-UK wrote:

So let me get this straight.. you kill someone and deliberately try and conceal the evidence, and not even show an apeth of remorse... and you go to jail for two years.

WTF has our legal system come to?! How is this not a national outrage?

3,000 people die on the roads every year. A fair number will be killed by drivers who later end up in court and receive the usual few months sentences, if even that. It's been that way for a long time. It's "normal".
National Outrages need something extra-ordinary to happen. A celebrity being killed wouldn't be enough (it's happened before), it would have to take some extra details to make the news "campaign-worthy" for one of the national newspapers. Even then it would have a slim chance of working.

Deaths on the roads aren't an issue in the UK (the UK has some of the safest roads in Europe, if not the world believe it or not). Couple that with the fact drivers who kill are not the traditional criminal an already overcrowded prison system is designed to deal with and you start to get a lot of authoritive inertia to longer sentences.

simple_salmon

Jamey - according to tinternet Causing Death by Careless Driving was introduced in August 2008 with a maximum 5 year jail term; why is that not applicable?

Jamey

In that case I stand corrected on that point, apologies.

The fact remains, however, that if there was enough evidence to convict him of anything, yet not enough to pin a larger charge on him then either it wasn't completely his fault or the evidence was shoddy.

always_tyred

Eau Rouge wrote:

Deaths on the roads aren't an issue in the UK (the UK has some of the safest roads in Europe, if not the world believe it or not).

Does this apply to cyclists?

Wallace1492

simple_salmon wrote:

Jamey - according to tinternet Causing Death by Careless Driving was introduced in August 2008 with a maximum 5 year jail term; why is that not applicable?

The offence happened in July 07, so presumably it was not on the statute at the time he was charged.

BenS999

drag him out into the road and shoot him i say, we could all do with less drivers that behave like this on the roads or otherwise.

JOHN4537

Jamey wrote:

He was found guilty of two things:

1) Careless Driving (not Dangerous Driving, which would have been a more serious charge).
2) Perverting the Course of Justice.

This is all very tragic and my sympathys go out to the cyclists family.

But item 1) above, Careless driving vs Dangerous driving, I feel should be one and the same.

If you are careless then you must also be regarded as dangerous!

Jamey

JOHN4537 wrote:

But item 1) above, Careless driving vs Dangerous driving, I feel should be one and the same.

If you are careless then you must also be regarded as dangerous!

Well that's an English language matter more than anything else. The names of the two may or may not be appropriate (separate debate) but basically you should think of them as "bad driving 1" and "bad driving 2" with one being more severe than the other.

But which is more severe? One or two? Let's debate it while people die

JOHN4537

you are right indeed jamey.

where the line is drawn betwen one and the other will always be debated. To those it matters most to though, there probabily isn't a line to draw.

(on another matter btw ... excellent photoblog you have. Super compositions )

Jamey

Cheers ears

tailwindhome

Why not charge relating to leaving the scene of the accident?


*Paging Spen666 to the thread*

dilemna

If the driver Stubbs doesn't jump off Beachy Head once he's released, he should be pushed.

Mr Sworld

From one of my other forums I frequent:

http://www.outdoorsmagic.com/forum/forummessages/mps/dt/1/UTN/32895/V/1/SP/

My thoughts go out to the family.

gb155

Chicane-UK wrote:

So let me get this straight.. you kill someone and deliberately try and conceal the evidence, and not even show an apeth of remorse... and you go to jail for two years.

WTF has our legal system come to?! How is this not a national outrage?

I agree 110%

rake

Mr Sworld

rake wrote:

i dont know why they put the cabin so high up on lorrys. if the drivers seat was at bumper height i think you would see them leaving a lot more clearance not wanting to be crushed by their own lorry if they crash.

It's because the engine is below you..... I've driven 7.5 tonne trucks and the high cab gives you a much better view of the road than any car driver!

It's all about using your mirrors...

Specialized Needs

Mr Sworld wrote:

rake wrote:

i dont know why they put the cabin so high up on lorrys. if the drivers seat was at bumper height i think you would see them leaving a lot more clearance not wanting to be crushed by their own lorry if they crash.

It's because the engine is below you..... I've driven 7.5 tonne trucks and the high cab gives you a much better view of the road than any car driver!

It's all about using your mirrors...

If I can state the obvious here, it may be a better view of the road ahead, but it is a worse view of certain areas in close proximity to the cab (including directly in front) and, naturally given that the load will limit vision, of the areas just below and behind the seating area. Mirrors can assist, but currently most cabs still have huge blind spots.

I wasn't sure whether to contribute this post, and so I would like to make clear that this is purely a response to the content of the above post, and not a comment on the incident reported in the OP.

hodsgod

MadammeMarie wrote:

The charge should be manslaughter, but this is not even that. THIS IS MURDER!!!! What a scumbag! :evil:

how do you say it's murder?

The lorry driver was a complete arsehole, but some of the comments on this thread are crazy.