From The Metro:
Cyclist is jailed for killing by 1861 law
A cyclist was sent to prison yesterday for killing a pedestrian – using a law passed in 1861.
Darren Hall was jailed for seven months after admitting 'wanton and furious driving causing bodily harm'... The law is still used because there is no other appropriate legislation to prosecute cyclists who kill or seriously injure pedestrians.
I know that it's been a quiet news day and all, but what is so surprising about that? The act they mean is the Offences Against The Person Act 1861, which is the backbone of the law as it stands on violent crime etc (having been amended a fair few times, but still in the same basic form), and which contains the everyday expressions GBH (Sections 18 and 20) and ABH (Section 47). So this isn't some ancient act that they dusted down down and wheeled out for a special occasion, it's plain vanilla stuff.
The relevant section is Section 35:
Whosoever, having the charge of any carriage or vehicle, shall by wanton or furious driving or racing, or other wilful misconduct, or by wilful neglect, do or cause to be done any bodily harm to any person whatsoever, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years...
I don't even need to bother writing my own summing up, as I can pinch this from the article:
Paul Watters, of the AA, said: 'The law has done its job on this occasion and there's no immediate need to change it. Why reinvent the wheel?'
Indeed. Paul Watters' comment has done the job on this occasion and there's no immediate need to change it. Why reinvent the wheel?
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Rather strange emphasis
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8 comments:
Because it's old, so must therefore be inferior. That's probably the thinking.
The issue here is that car and lorry drivers are prosecuted not under this Offences Against The person Act 1861 as you point out, but under the more lenient Road Traffic Act 1988.
Why? Well if reckless car and lorry drivers were punished under the same law as cyclists, a significant proportion of our prisoners would be incarcerated for the 20,000 or so people killed each year by motor vehicles.
The twisted logic being applied here is that a car or lorry is more difficult to control and therefore the drivers actually have less responsibility than if they were on bicycles (yes you read that right).
As a consequence, even though they share the same piece of road, a cyclist is charged for offenses under different much stricter laws than a motorist.
The reason it's been picked up is because the application of the law is perverse, irrational and unfair. After all, notice that the description of any carriage or vehicle in the Offences Against The Person Act could just as easily apply to motor vehicles.
Only it doesn't.
Paul, where are you getting your figures from? 20,000 killed per year by motor vehicles? As the sum total of deaths last year was some 3,200 - which included about 500+ motorcyclists who succeeded in offing themselves in "single vehicle accidents" - may I respectfully suggest that you take more water with it in future.
Actually, the application of the law is somewhat irrational - that bloody idiot cyclist only received 7 months in gaol, the last equivalent motorist to hit the headlines got 3 years. Both totally inadequate sentences in my opinion.
Actually, the application of the law is somewhat irrational - that bloody idiot cyclist only received 7 months in gaol, the last equivalent motorist to hit the headlines got 3 years.
That's because killing someone is an entirely likely and foreseeable consequence of driving like an idiot, whereas it's an extremely unlikely and rare consequence of cycling like an idiot - and the law is based on reasonable expectations more than it is on sheer luck.
It's a little like saying "Murderer prosecuted under 1751 law".
John B, I beg to disagree.
It may be "an extremely unlikely and rare consequence of cycling like an idiot" on the road, where it's reasonable to assume that the likelyhood of death or serious injury would be less than that for a car. However, from what I've read, this particular lunatic was riding on a crowded footpath - whereupon the likelyhood that a collision would occur rises from a "possible" to a very high level of "probable", at which point continuing the behaviour could be construed as criminal negligence on the part of the cyclist, at which point "luck" becomes irrelevant.
To sum up English criminal law, the severity of the sentence depends on various things;
1. The actual harm caused;
2. The likelihood that what you were doing would cause such harm (then there are 'subjective' and 'objective' tests - did you know or should you have known that it was risky, but let's skip over that bit);
3. Your intention to actually cause such harm.
A death is a death, that's 1. covered.
Riding a bike on a pavement is obviously riskier than on the road; driving a car is riskier than riding a bike, that's 2.
There's no suggestion that the cyclist wanted to kill or injure somebody - if he did, then this would be murder, plain and simple. The question of intent or recklessness is, e.g. the dividing line between murder and manslaughter, so that's 3.
"That's because killing someone is an entirely likely and foreseeable consequence of driving like an idiot, whereas it's an extremely unlikely and rare consequence of cycling like an idiot.."
That's right! Because on the road, if you drive like an idiot you run the risk of hitting all those other drivers in the half-tonne metal boxes with airbags, etc, whereas on the pavement you merely have to worry about those squishy pedestr...
Err...
What was johnb's point again?
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