Monday, 9 April 2012

Causing Death by Careless Driving - Some recent sentencing cases


Date of sentence
Community Order

Rob Jefferies
18 months
200 hours
Alastair Pratt
18 months
150 hours
Tomas Barrett
Not Guilty
12 months
100 hours
Thomas Stone
12 months
36 months

Pat Kenny
Not guilty
12 months
150 hours







Nature of offence
Starting Point
Sentencing range
Careless or inconsiderate driving falling not far short of dangerous driving
15 months custody
36 weeks–3 years custody
Other cases of careless or inconsiderate driving
36 weeks custody
Community order (HIGH)–2 years custody
Careless or inconsiderate driving arising from momentary inattention with no aggravating factors
Community order (MEDIUM)
Community order (LOW)–Community







  1. Useful and interesting, as always.

    You say: "Both cyclists, once convicted, were given the very minimum sentence available to the Court."

    I think you mean, "Both drivers ..."

  2. I do indeed. Thank you very much for pointing that out. Now corrected.

  3. It seems perverse that drivers and motor-vehicles are somehow seen as 'safe' and bicycles and their riders are seen as 'dangerous'. This would seem to have more in common with 'Alice in Wonderland' than real world justice.

  4. There does seem to still be a prevalent attitude that it can still be a surprise that a bicycle is in the road at all. Drivers being 'surprised' by bicycles simply aren't looking for them and in many cases simply couldn't care less.

    It's not that drivers want to kill or injure cyclists, and I'm sure it's quite a thing to live with, but it seems that the majority of drivers need a judicial threat not to do something rather than deciding to do it themselves.

    I wonder how many deaths have been due to the common occurrence of the 'punishment pass' but then drivers have subsequently will use a defence of not seeing the cyclist.

    Drivers will continue to not give cyclists due care until there is a serious penalty for situations that could have been prevented by taking due care.

  5. Thank you for this post. It's interesting and educational and should be seen by a wider audience.

  6. I have no desire at all to defend the sentencing, but I would like to point out that, given the nature of vision, the SMIDSY (sorry mate I didn't see you) defence is not completely unreasonable.

    Although we think that we see everything within our visual field a large part of our perceived environment is created by the brain. Our eyes jump about focusing with the small area that has high resolution and updating parts of the picture, often in response to movements perceived in less sensitive parts of the visual field. Large parts of the visual field do not get updated very often and are just "filled in" by the brain.

    The eye can easily saccade (jump) past an object the size of a bicycle, especially when seen from behind, with no update made to the picture as seen by the brain. If the driver were stationary, the movement of the cyclist would attract the focus of the eye. But in a car moving at not inconsiderable speed, everything in the environment, except other cars which are effectively stationary or much faster, is moving at approximately the same speed relative to the driver, so does not draw the attention. Our visual system has not evolved to operate well in moving cars.

    In view of how poor our visual system is, it is not surprising that cyclists and pedestrians are not always seen. And, by consequence, it may take no lapse of concentration at all to miss seeing a cyclist or pedestrian. I am not saying that lapses of concentration do not occur or that they do not contribute to people being killed and injured. I am saying that even without such lapses, it is not surprising that such events occur.

    This is not an argument to say that such accidents are inevitable so should be accepted. It is clear under what conditions these accidents are likely to happen; when the speed differential between cars and bicycles is large and other distracting factors cause less accurate updating of the visual environment. This is going to happen on large roads, and be made worse at dawn and twilight. Where it is not likely to happen is when cars are moving slowly and continuously (junctions are a different question) and there are lots of moving objects in the visual field, so that the entire field is updated regularly.

    In my opinion harsher sentencing will not help this problem. A few dangerous drivers will be kept off of the road. But those few drivers would have been unlikely to have been the cause of a second serious accident (although there have been some notable cases of exactly this recently). There will always be enough other drivers such that the toll on cyclists will not noticeably diminish.

    The solution is to keep cyclists and cars apart in the situations where these accidents are likely to occur. This does not mean putting in segregated cycling lanes everywhere. But much could be done to reduce such casualties by implementing decent segregated cycle lanes in situations where there are large amounts of fast moving traffic on routes that cyclists have to use. This would mean principally on large urban routes. Obviously, the cycle paths would have to be of a quality that makes them the route of choice for all cyclists.

    Making sentences for killing and injuring cyclists more in line with similar offences is just, but would not help reduce such accidents, which should be the main goal.

    1. I would point you to this comment in the article..."My experience and conviction is that every driver who cycles has no difficulty whatever with this." An experience I would agree with. It would be very interesting to know how genuine this opinion is by knowing what ratio of cyclists are KSI by motorists who are also frequent cyclists.

      I bet that when they are driving people who cycle have no trouble spotting cyclists or leaving them enough room.

    2. "(sorry mate I didn't see you) defence is not completely unreasonable."

      Yes it is completely unreasonable, if you can't look where you're going in a vehicle then get the hell out of it and stop driving.

      Seriously, how can you even say such a stupid thing.

    3. If there are lapses in vision as "medium spiny" suggests that's an argument for slowing drivers right down or removing them altogether from public spaces such as streets where children and others should not be subject to such potential driving errors. People are everywhere and the roads should belong to them. Yes, segregation on busier roads may be a good solution, but what about everywhere else?

  7. A splendid article, especially so as it has brought out such thoughtful responses. Mediumspiny, especially, offers a valuable counter to some of the understandable unhapinees expressed in the normal run of commentary by cyclists like me.

  8. We all know that careless drivers are as dangerous as drunk ones. Unfortunately pedestrians and cyclists are defenseless in frond of these drivers because they don't have a metal box with airbags defending them....
    All drivers should be more careful because innocent people can be injured or even die.
    I was accused of careless driving Toronto once and since that moment I'm very careful especially when I see cyclists in front of me.

  9. Hi im new on here and found that an interesting read... I am currently on bail awaiting sentance for causing death by having no insurance. Now before you start calling me names i did have an insurance policy but didnt disclose 3 points on my licence in 2009 (it genuinly sliped my mind i just forgot) so ive been pulled for a technicality therefore my insurance is deemed void! Now to the accident itself I was driving home late one night in december up a dark road near my home and as i took a sharp left hand bend there was a cyclist on my side of the road with no lights, no high vis and no helmet. I do not know what the cyclist was doing there but we collided head on, unfortunatly the cyclist died, i was uninjured. i have my own business, house, wife and 2 children aged 10 and 4 and ive been told im looking at 18 months in prison! do you think this is fair? opinions please thankyou

    1. I know nothing about the individual facts and circumstances other than what you have said and I think it would be dangerous of me to comment on the individual case on that basis. I am not entirely convinced that the account of being convicted when you had an insurance policy (albeit voidable for misrepresentation) quite stacks up.
      I regard driving without insurance as an essentially economic crime which makes it less heinous to my mind, but more heinous to many courts, than unsafe driving. Nonetheless uninsured drivers are a menace: they are not paying the even modest price that society expects of them for the risks they impose upon others. This is true of the individual who does not bother to insure at all but also of the bad driver who 'forgets' to reveal his bad driving record to insurers and so pays the premium of a careful driver. It is also true of a parent who pretends to be the principal user of his/her offspring's car.
      If you have strictly accurately represented that you were in no sense at fault in the happening of the collision I, for one, would be slightly surprised if you received an immediate custodial sentence.

  10. Hi Martin - I am a long time CTC member, and was directed to this site by a friend. (incidentally, I knew of Pat Kenny above, as did many CTC and long distance cyclists, a wonderful man)and probably rode in events with him.
    I have just had a foi answered,[I won't go into why I asked it here, which has certain unusual aspects to it and in any case sentencing wasn't covered in the press,hence my foi] concerning a motorcyclist's death, but it could easily have been a cyclist.
    A guilty plea was entered for:

    Causing death by careless driving
    Causing death whilst uninsured
    Fraud by false representation.

    The sentence was
    "200 hours unpaid work, 12months disqualification with extended re-test & £200 costs.

    It was decided by the coroner that there was no need to hold an inquest."

    The tarriff seems standard for the first offence, but when the other two aspects are introduced, the sentence seems somewhat mild, pace Nadia Roberts. Do you agree?


    This is not logically possible! Extra care means more care than normal. Until the vulnerable road user is detected, this extra care can't kick in.

    What really matters is that a normal level of care is high enough to detect vulnerable road users at an early enough stage. The vulnerable need to - and in most cases do - help themselves in this regard by being visible by attire, lighting and road position.

  12. I wonder why those drivers didnt have punishment? Drivers will continue to not give cyclists due care until there is a serious penalty for situations that could have been prevented by taking due care.