Kingston Road Rage incident

RedWheels

I Once owned a car, and i think thats largely why i am alive today.


I wonder what the parents of the other kids in the car think (i assume they are not all hers!)

What is interesting is that this story is likely to have gotten a lot less attention if it wasn't for the damaged property. In fact she most likely would have gotten away with it if her driving was a bit 'better' and managed to both kill the guy and avoid the shop and parked van.

redvee

From AOL

http://cars.aol.co.uk/2014/06/11/woman- ... d%3D271059

veronese68

Was out with a few local friends last night and found out a bit more about this. Woman is quite a piece of work by all accounts, hopefully they will throw the book at her.

The Rookie

Veronese68 wrote:

found out a bit more about this.

AND.........

vermin

The Rookie wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

found out a bit more about this.

AND.........

... as the lawyers fumble eagerly for their notepads ...

greg66_tri_v2.0

Veronese68 wrote:

Was out with a few local friends last night and found out a bit more about this. Woman is quite a piece of work by all accounts, hopefully they will throw the book at her.

I'm not sure this is very credible.

The you having friends bit, I mean.

tgotb

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

Was out with a few local friends last night and found out a bit more about this. Woman is quite a piece of work by all accounts, hopefully they will throw the book at her.

I'm not sure this is very credible.

The you having friends bit, I mean.

Don't judge everyone by your own standards!

veronese68

OK, some people I met in a pub.
I amended my original post after advice from someone who knows better than me. Could have been almost anyone on here then.

DrLex

A poster purporting to be the cyclist involved has posted on the long thread on cycle chat. Unsurprisingly, he has been advised to stay mum on the topic. His concern for the way the driver is being portrayed in the media is greater than I'd have expected for someone reportedly wearing a badge proclaiming autism.

rower63

From today's Times:
"A woman who drove for two miles through Los Angeles with a pedestrian she had hit injured and dying on her car’s bonnet has been jailed for at least 55 years.
Sherri Wilkins, 53, a former substance abuse counsellor, pulled over only when another motorist signalled for her to stop.
When she eventually stopped her car she smoked a cigarette as bystanders tried to help the injured man. He later died in hospital.
Wilkins was convicted in February of second degree murder, driving under the influence and leaving the scene of the crash that killed Phillip Moreno, 31.
During her trial Wilkins insisted that she was not drunk at the time, although she had had three vodka shots with beer and tomato juice.
It appeared to her that the man “came from the sky”, describing it as “like a blur of something, like a flash of something”.
“It was very shocking and very strange,” she said, adding: “I didn’t know what was going on... I don’t feel like I had hit him with my car.”
The Los Angeles Superior Court heard that she then drove through a Los Angeles suburb, swerving the car to shake Mr Moreno off.
Describing her “extraordinary callousness”, Judge Henry Hall denied her lawyers’ request for a new trial, saying that there was “clearly sufficient” evidence against her."

She chose the wrong country to do that, here it would've been £200 fine and a few points.

veronese68

:shock: "Extraordinary callousness" doesn't quite describe that sufficiently.

The Rookie

Yes but Judges do tend towards the understatement.......some of their statements are hilarious in that respect.

BigLights

This is the answer from the Magistrate relative re my question of what GBH punishment entails:

"There are many "it depends" factors. There are three categories of GBH, two of which are Crown Court only. The third one, lesser harm and lower culpability, has a starting point of high level community order, with a range of low-level community order to 12 months custody. And even those are "guidelines not tramlines". There's also a long list of aggravating and mitigating features. As I made the point in the link I sent, only the people who hear all the evidence, and also judge the demeanour of the defendant, and then see previous convictions, are really in a position to make informed decisions. "

The Rookie

BigLights wrote:

As I made the point in the link I sent, only the people who hear all the evidence, and also judge the demeanour of the defendant, and then see previous convictions, are really in a position to make informed decisions. "

Excellent point well made, and something those who post news article links fail to appreciate when reading a short resume of case and the sentence.

BigLights

yeah. The link (which I didn't want to include for fear of identifying) was in relation to an individual who was facing some serious charges for driving off with a person on the bonnet, who then fell off and got injured.

The defendant was cleared of almost everything, as it turns out she was really rather lovely, and the chav aggressor had threatened, jumped on the bonnet, threatened the kids in the car etc. This chav also spent a significant portion of the time in court time swearing at the judges, lawyers, and defendant. So a decision was made that the defendant was quite clearly provoked beyond sanity.

veronese68

:shock: That is incredible, I should stop being surprised at how stupid some people can be. I was thinking after your post that everyone knows they have to behave in court in order to minimise their sentence so demeanour in court isn't truly representative, you could also claim in defence that demeanour at the time of the incident isn't representative due to the stress of the situation.

slowbike

BigLights wrote:

yeah. The link (which I didn't want to include for fear of identifying) was in relation to an individual who was facing some serious charges for driving off with a person on the bonnet, who then fell off and got injured.

The defendant was cleared of almost everything, as it turns out she was really rather lovely, and the chav aggressor had threatened, jumped on the bonnet, threatened the kids in the car etc. This chav also spent a significant portion of the time in court time swearing at the judges, lawyers, and defendant. So a decision was made that the defendant was quite clearly provoked beyond sanity.

Sounds like self defence to me ... and I dunno about "provoked beyond sanity" ... if anyone jumped on the bonnet of my car and started threatening the occupants then I'd probably* do similar ... !




* depends on the circumstances obviously - 4 big blokes in the car vs one little old lady dancing on the bonnet and I wouldn't worry ... the other way around ... well ...

RedWheels

The whole demeanour thing is absolute rubbish.

A poor kid who went to a rubbish school, lives in an economically deprived area and only experience of the 'law' is when cops stop and search, them cannot portray the same 'demeanour' as a well educated middle class kid who comes from the same social class as the Judge who makes his decisions based on 'demeanour'

Thats why so many of these 4x4 drivers get off with lenient sentences for almost killing cyclists.

BigLights

RedWheels - I have had this debate endlessly, and I just disagree with that assertion. Yes, upbringing is clearly pivotal. However, I would put it to you, if you take pretty much anyone off the street and thell them I'll give you £10,000 if you behave yourself for 12 hours, I'm pretty sure most would know what's right and wrong.

Equally, £10k to keep your mouth shut in court isn't impossible.

I'm not talking about the intricacies of multi course formal dinners here. Just basic, keep a low profile behaviour.

which is where I feel a lot of the cultural arguments fall down. Obviously not a catcha ll, but I am not entirely enclined to just forgive people because they've had it tough.

pblakeney

Paging Vtech, paging Vtech......

jedster

"which is where I feel a lot of the cultural arguments fall down. Obviously not a catcha ll, but I am not entirely enclined to just forgive people because they've had it tough."

I tend to agree BigLights. The fact is that a lot of people up on charges are pretty rubbish - stupid, ignorant, weak impulse control, rude, obnoxious. You can debate why they ended up that way and while some of it will be poor basic abilities and some of it will be disadvantaged background, a chunk will be them choosing not to do the right thing, over and over again. My sister started her career as a criminal lawyer thinking that it would be more rewarding (not financially!) than other parts of the law but quickly realised that you either spent a lot of time getting people off that were likely guilty or alternatively putting away the weak and feckless. She totally acknowledged that weak and feckless criminals NEEDED to be put away, just didn't find it that satisfying.
The criminal legal system is basically refuse collection.

davmaggs

BigLights wrote:

RedWheels - I have had this debate endlessly, and I just disagree with that assertion. Yes, upbringing is clearly pivotal. However, I would put it to you, if you take pretty much anyone off the street and thell them I'll give you £10,000 if you behave yourself for 12 hours, I'm pretty sure most would know what's right and wrong.

Equally, £10k to keep your mouth shut in court isn't impossible.

I'm not talking about the intricacies of multi course formal dinners here. Just basic, keep a low profile behaviour.

which is where I feel a lot of the cultural arguments fall down. Obviously not a catcha ll, but I am not entirely enclined to just forgive people because they've had it tough.

I'd say that this is almost certainly incorrect. A good number of the people arrested and that appear in court are screw-ups who cannot control themselves or think ahead more than a few minutes ahead of what they are doing in the moment (like toddlers who never grew up).

There's a good chance that having got your offer of £10k that one of these morons would then go for a quiet drink to celebrate coming into such a large sum of money, which in turn gets them picked up for fighting a few hours later. You'd think it insane that someone couldn't control themselves for 24 hours for £10k, but some of them simply can't.

Look at America where 3 strikes can get someone locked up for 15 years on their third offence and you'll find morons in jail who stole a pizza or some other nonsense item despite having money in their pocket.

BigLights

I don't think the US criminal justice system is a good peer comparison. They have the highest prison population in the world. 1 in 100 American adults are in prison, and actually about 3% of the adult population is under 'correctional supervision' - in prison, probation, parole or similar. 25% of the entire world's prisoners are in the US.

I've spent a fair bit of time in the US. The criminal justice system (from the police to the courts) is horrifyingly racist. Black adults account for about 40% of the prison population, but only 13.6% of the total population. You do the maths. Cops are incentivised and given a bonus on the number of arrests they make so, for example, it's far easier to just stop and arrest a black youth and chances are you'll find something you can arrest them for. Investigating a murder or a rape is far less attractive now, as the arrest rate is far lower.

The system is also designed, and this is really shocking, to use drug penalties as a way of controlling race. By which I mean for example, the punishment for having 1 gram of crack (the favoured choice of minorities) is fully 100 TIMES greater than 1 gram of cocaine (the favoured choice of wealthier white folk). This explains why fully 98% of people sent to prison for drugs in California, for example, are black. Not white.

I was seriously considering relocating there until I spent a couple of 1 month stints in the US, and I just cannot reconcile these attitudes. Land of the Free, it most certainly is not.

BigLights

Pressed enter too early - I was going to add, in almost direct opposition to the US, the UK justice system is really set up to give everyone every possible chance to redeem themselves before actually being sent to prison.

pblakeney

BigLights wrote:

Cops are incentivised and given a bonus on the number of arrests they make so, for example, it's far easier to just stop and arrest a black youth and chances are you'll find something you can arrest them for.

What exactly does this sentence mean?
False arrests, or your assumption that they will have something on them?

davmaggs

BigLights wrote:

I don't think the US criminal justice system is a good peer comparison. They have the highest prison population in the world. 1 in 100 American adults are in prison, and actually about 3% of the adult population is under 'correctional supervision' - in prison, probation, parole or similar. 25% of the entire world's prisoners are in the US.

Who has even mentioned the US system as a comparison?

I think you've not read the points above in the right context.

kurako

Another incident on Saturday. Another GBH charge. Perhaps the locals have cottoned on to the fact running people over is not treated particularly seriously by the courts.

http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news ... ?ref=var_0

pblakeney

Kurako wrote:

Another incident on Saturday. Another GBH charge. Perhaps the locals have cottoned on to the fact running people over is not treated particularly seriously by the courts.

http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news ... ?ref=var_0

At least they are getting charged with GBH instead of a motoring offence, which is the norm.
It is a start.

BigLights

Davmaggs - I think you mentioned America, no?

PBlakeney - What I meant was that US cops can find away to justify an arrest far more easily than UK cops. Whether that's J-walking (or even just accusation thereof), talking in the wrong way to an officer, etc. We are, in the UK, very fortunate to have one of the finest police forces on the planet and a justice system that, whilst frustrating, is at least generally fairer. That's all I mean.

The NYPD characters make the Met look like very patient saints by comparison.

RedWheels

BigLights wrote:

However, I would put it to you, if you take pretty much anyone off the street and thell them I'll give you £10,000 if you behave yourself for 12 hours, I'm pretty sure most would know what's right and wrong

Your not giving them £10,000 to behave themselves, your telling them to 'behave themselves' or we will fine into bankrupcy.

As for the right and wrong.

Is it right that a kid can go to jail for 2 years for stealing a bottle of water during the London riots, yet financial fraud and tax evasion can take place on epic scales robbing millions in each instance and yet they get away without even a slap on the wrist.


The british system, like the US system has plenty of examples of institutionalised racism. As well as showing over zealousness for crimes that are typically committed by people from working class backgrounds, whilst being lenient on crimes generally committed by the educated, wealthier groups in our society.



As you say, upbringing is pivotal, being an expression of class. More importantly though, its the law which needs to be redressed. A woman (in this case) deliberately driving into a cyclist should be charged with attempted murder. She is in position of a weapon and is using it with intent, her 'regret' or how much she impresses the Judge with her curtseys should have nothing to do it. A good demeanour can't bring someone back from the dead, and that could so easily have been the case.