A driver has admitted speeding in fog at more than 80mph in a 30mph zone in Oxford.
He was sentenced to a 12-month community order and 200 hours of unpaid work. He was also disqualified from driving for 12 months and ordered to pay £85 costs and a £60 victim surcharge.
tinyurl.com/ngcr9hk - www.thisisoxfordshire.co.uk
Sounds like they should have banned him for life.
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>>12-month community order and 200 hours of unpaid work
A hair's breadth from being sent down.
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Insignia I think?
Vauxhall drivers....
;-)
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It's a Merc for sure but not sure which model.
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They need to be if the driver has left his paper bag at home.
;-)
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A resoundingly stupid thing to do, for which he has been severely punished, given that nobody got hurt.
But banned for life? A bit of an over reaction, surely.
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>> But banned for life? A bit of an over reaction, surely.
>>
He was in effect handling a potentially lethal weapon, careless of whether it hit anyone or not.
Compare that with brandishing a shotgun in the street? He'd lose his licence for life.
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You don't get 5 years for owning an unregistered car though - not exactly comparable ;-)
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>> You don't get 5 years for owning an unregistered car though
>>
It wont be long I'm sure!
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>> for which he has been severely punished, given that nobody got hurt.
If somebody *had* been hurt then he would have spent some time at HM's pleasure; if they'd been killed then it would have been for a long time. I don't think he was severely punished.
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>> >> for which he has been severely punished, given that nobody got hurt.
>>
>> If somebody *had* been hurt then he would have spent some time at HM's pleasure;
>> if they'd been killed then it would have been for a long time. I don't
>> think he was severely punished.
He didn't kill anyone, thats why they brought in the "causing death by" charges to severely punish someone. So he got what he got, about appropriate I would have thought but the ban could have been longer.
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It comes back to [my] old argument of what the punishment is supposed to achieve.
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He was prepared to drive at a highly dangerous speed. The fact that nobody was hurt is irrelevant to his driving. If he will be so reckless once why not again ? He deserved to have been banned for life, with prison if he broke the ban. Judges have to follow legal guidelines, which will have happened. However, in this case, in my view, a much greater punishment was deserved - there could be no mitigation.
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a much greater punishment was deserved -
With a Kim Dung Ug haircut to top it off !
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>>However, in this case, in my view, a much greater punishment was deserved - there could be no mitigation.
I might be more in favour of keelhauling if the offence was on a city street, or a housing estate.
The penalty seems fairly stiff but OK to me, almost lenient given the hypocritical attitude that the justice system has to an offence that everybody commits, almost always undetected, every day. But 5 weeks work is no joke. The year ban, at minimum, is inevitable given that totting up of trivial offences attracts 6 months.
Obviously prevention is better than cure, but consequences do matter. If a victimless motoring offence deserves a more draconian penalty, then wilful GBH must merit the death sentence, and murder drawing and quartering. There has to be some proportion.
The eastern end of that road is a classic mad mile, arrow straight. Probably derestricted /NSL a few years ago. Exactly where I'd put a mobile camera or hide with a radar gun.
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Really, does everybody drive with a similar disregard for safety every day ? Perhaps I didn't express myself clearly. In my view, yes an opinion, the fact that it was victimless was not down to any merit of the driver. I do not agree that your comparisons are relevant and, in any case, pursue the idea to an illogical extreme. I do agree with you that punishments should be proportionate. Should somebody who is willing to drive like that continue to be able to be in charge of what is a lethal weapon ?
I have not suggested any restriction on his movement. There is public transport or other people with a safer attitude who could drive him wherever he wants to be. I still think it is a shocking example of dangerous driving and deserves the loss of his permission to drive.
There needs to be greater effort put into enforcing limits. However, I'm sure people would complain that the limits are wrong and they are perfectly capable of driving faster.
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Why does everyone want this geezer to be punished? For all the information we have he might well have been driving perfectly safely, except in the eyes of a rabid speed limit wonk. Slowing down in one of those endless rural 30mph limits that are appearing everywhere, for example.
What a load of tut-tutting wimps.
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In absolute terms the penalty may be unjustified. I wasn't there. I was commenting in the context of the prevailing hypocritical treatment of "speeding". But, given that, he was taking the pee.
When I say that's where I'd put a speed trap, on a straight relatively quiet bit of road, I meant if I wanted the maximum yield. They'd probably have caught me too, well hidden and on a clear road, though not at that speed because I want to keep a licence. Driving at more than 50 over habitually is bound to attract attention at the very least, and once caught is a ban.
Oxfordshire has a lot of 50 limits on fast roads. Not a nice county for motoring.
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I think the point here is that it was
1. 80 in a 30 implying built up area, google maps show straight road with lots of residential entries.
2. Foggy
Both show a TOTAL disregard for the safety of others. He can't claim that there was no-one about as:
1. It was foggy so he couldn't see
2. There was a geezer in a van that he clearly didn't see.
I am comfortable with the penalty, either loses 5 weeks pay while he does the 200 hours or sacrifices his year's holiday. Can't drive for a year.
How would you have felt if he had hit your car when you were pulling out of your drive with your children in the car on the way to school? TImed at 08:47 so in the school rush on a Tuesday.
Too may people take the view that nothing happened - but that was only luck and not judgement.
Edit - there are even chicanes to slow traffic on the road.
Last edited by: IJWS14 on Thu 27 Mar 14 at 08:22
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>
>> How would you have felt if he had hit your car when you were pulling
>> out of your drive with your children in the car on the way to school?
>> TImed at 08:47 so in the school rush on a Tuesday.
Your kids are going to get detention, school started 2 minutes ago.
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Children are sometimes late - also, at any time, a distressed child may be coming from or going to school. There is no way he might have been driving safely at that speed in those conditions. A.C. it is not wimpish to want people to be safe.
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On further reflection I realise that a lifetime ban is maybe too severe - no hope of redemption. However, there must be some way to be confident that the driver no has a more responsible attitude.
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>> What a load of tut-tutting wimps.
>>
Wow. Macho fantastico.
84 in a 30? IN THE FOG??? During the rush hour? Book, throw. Keys, also throw.
The real wimp is he who has to try to prove he's a man by driving like a raving maniac.
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Wonders will never cease, I agree with you Alanovic about something related to driving:)
Pat
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No prizes for knowing who the scowly face came from:)
Pat
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>>No prizes for knowing who the scowly face came from
I've noticed them increasing in the last week or so.
Who do you reckon?
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>> No prizes for knowing who the scowly face came from:)
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>> Pat
Who?
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Have a look on Google Maps. Obviously 84mph is excessive, but how many of you would have been doing 30mph?
So, lets say you'd been doing 40mph. What would the appropriate punishment? at 60mph?
What if you'd been doing 40mph and killed a child?
It seems to me the penalty the bloke got in this case was appropriate. Lifetime bans etc. are going too far.
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>> The real wimp is he who has to try to prove he's a man by driving like a raving maniac.
The guy may have been driving like a raving maniac. But he may not, for all we know. That was my point, such as it was. I get a bit irritated by unanimous indignation.
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>> The guy may have been driving like a raving maniac. But he may not, for
>> all we know. That was my point, such as it was. I get a bit
>> irritated by unanimous indignation.
>>
The point is what he did is by definition in the raving maniac spectrum. What is possibly missing from his behaviour that would drop him to somewhere below raving on the maniac scale?
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In case it matters, assuming its the road I think it is, then 30mph is totally unnecessary, 50mph is probably more reasonable.
However, at 80mph on that road it is impossible to be even reasonably safe. Aside from anything else I think you'd only be able to hold onto the steering wheel in the middle of the road given the state of the edges.
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>> If a victimless motoring offence
>> deserves a more draconian penalty, then wilful GBH must merit the death sentence, and murder
>> drawing and quartering. There has to be some proportion.
>>
I don't agree. I don't think the argument for ending capital punishment included shuffling back through all degrees of offence and downgrading every punishment one notch, just to preserve proportionality.
Conversely, reintroducing the death penalty would not necessarily mean that evading a TV licence should be re-criminalised. :)
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Chances are the guy was being a bit of a maniac. But 'foggy conditions' aren't necessarily all that foggy, and many seem aware that ludicrously low speed limits are proliferating.
It's just that few proper facts are given in the story, just the raw figure intended to elicit the knee-jerk indignation response.
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Guy is an idiot. He lives in the village so he knows the road. At the point he was caught there are loads driveways with very poor visibility fronting the narrow road where you'd need your bumper poking out into the road before you could see to pull away.. Due to the possibility of a dog, child, horse, tractor car etc exiting I would probably only do 30-40mph max on a dry clear day.
There's even a postbox there which might increase the chance someone has stopped (perhaps unwisely if foggy) half into the road.
If nothing else he is risking his own death thereby removing the chance to speed another day where it's safe.
Last edited by: Fenlander on Thu 27 Mar 14 at 13:18
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>> It's just that few proper facts are given in the story, just the raw figure
>> intended to elicit the knee-jerk indignation response.
>>
AC, your automatic Toad-like defence of anyone speeding comes across as somewhat knee-jerk also.
In this case, we have not just been provided with the "raw figure", but the prevailing weather conditions, time of day, and nature of the particular road. Again, what other information is missing that we would need in order to form the judgement "raving maniac"?
Last edited by: Alanović on Thu 27 Mar 14 at 13:43
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>> automatic Toad-like defence of anyone speeding comes across as somewhat knee-jerk also.
It is, it is.
But video of fog can be misleading.
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>> But 'foggy conditions' aren't necessarily all that foggy
The video footage showed that it was a pea souper.
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I am glad that some of the lunatic drivers posting here don't live near me, we have enough already.
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>> I am glad that some of the lunatic drivers posting here don't live near me,
>> we have enough already.
And who, prey, are the "lunatic drivers" posting on here?
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>> And who, prey, are the "lunatic drivers" posting on here?
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I do so hope that I'm one of them.
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>> I do so hope that I'm one of them.
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At least you know when and where to do it safely.
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>> I do so hope that I'm one of them.
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I probably am, in the eyes of some here.
If so, they are wrong. But I must admit I have asked for it. It's not a big deal.
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>> Chances are the guy was being a bit of a maniac. But 'foggy conditions' aren't
>> necessarily all that foggy,
>>
OK, allow that it wasn't a real 1950s pea-souper and he didn't really need the policeman with the lamp showing where the road went.
Allow that speedometers have a bit of error built in to them, so it's never quite as fast as it seems.
Allow that some speed limits are stupidly low.
But 84 mph? What sort of speed would a full maniac have been doing?
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...If a victimless motoring offence...
How is it victimless? The rules of the road exist not to protect individuals but to improve the safety of society as a whole. Disregarding them to the extent that this driver did puts a big dent in that public safety by greatly increasing the probability that someone nearby will suffer an accident.
Another example: I discharge a rifle in the general direction of a crowd but the shot doesn't hit anyone. Is this a victimless offence?
We can't expect absolute safety, of course, but we are entitled to a reasonable degree, so when someone behaves like this, society itself is the victim. Discuss.
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84mph is ~40 metres/second.
Given that it takes about 1 second to see something, react, and hit the brakes that means if something happens half-a-football-pitch away it's still going to get beefed at 80mph.
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My wheels haven't seen 84 for a long time.......last time was on a deserted French autoroute on the bike in clear, hot sunlight.
Perhaps some of his 200 hours would be well spent in a busy local mortuary helping for a day. Handling and washing the dead certainly gives you a different view of life.
That would be against his Yuman Rites.....of course.
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>> We can't expect absolute safety, of course, but we are entitled to a reasonable degree, so when someone behaves like this, society itself is the victim. Discuss.
A tiny bit pompous WDB, no offence of course.
'Society' churns out a lot of damaged, feral thugs who victimize their fellow citizens. Discuss.
'Society' can look after itself by punishing people for merely exceeding speed limits, bad cess to it, even if the case in point is a bit worse than that. Discuss.
And so on.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Thu 27 Mar 14 at 21:15
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It seemed to me a reasonable reply to the claim that it was a 'victimless' crime. Anyone who has been through the exam system will surely have found the post amusing rather than in any degree pompous.
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Doing 84 mph in foggy conditions in a 30 mph area - Lygonos
