Man Who Breaks Ballet Dancers Neck Goes to Jail for 13 Years

mpdouglas

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-23001147

What a silly boy. He should have waited until the ballet dancer was out on his bike and driven in to him in a car. Then he would have got off with a stern warning and a temporary ban from driving.

Not wanting to belittle the significance of breaking someone's neck and leaving them for dead in the street, cases like this do bring out the utter inconsistency of sentencing in the UK.

It rightly seems that if you hurt someone, either accidentally or on purpose, you're in a world of trouble. Unless of course you happen to be driving a huge lump of metal around at which point you are afforded all sorts of lenience and any amount of carelessness, incompetence or wilful recklessness is deemed OK.

I'm intrigued to see how the case pans out where the cops have arrested a cyclist for striking a driver and their car with a U-lock. It really makes the point - the car driver can swing 1.5 tonnes of metal at a cyclist and it's largely OK but when the cyclist swings 1 kg of metal back at the driver, a national manhunt is launched to find the guy.

Rant over.

davmaggs

I fail to see your point.

Your tenuous link is that the victim happened to be in the street, which is also where cyclists sometimes get hurt too.

I do believe the Mars Rover lacks mirrors and is therefore a danger to cyclists. Why can't the BBC cover my complaint.

bigmat

Intent has a lot to do with this. If you accidentally dropped your D-lock on to somebody's car windscreen it probably wouldn't be viewed so badly. Similarly, if you could actually prove a driver deliberately knocked you off, they would be in a lot more trouble.

jonny_trousers

I see the OP's point. The link to the ballet dancer is pretty tenuous, but it serves as an attention grabbing headline.

I tend to stop by road.cc once a day to read their articles and it really is staggering how many reports there are of motorists getting away lightly after causing harm or death to cyclists, either intentionally or due to gross negligence.

mpdouglas

My point is a simple one - I'm sick of reading about cyclists getting maimed and killed by drivers through negligence and malicious intent and the perpetrators getting away with it.

The news story I linked to just really made the point that similar levels of injury in any other walk of life leads to very stiff penalties.

My contention is that the thug in a white van who deliberately cuts up a cyclist is just as wilfully seeking to injure as the guy that struck the ballet dancer. Why such disparity in the treatment of the perpetrator?

steve6690

You have to prove the intent, that's the issue.