(Gun ownership tends to be higher in rural states, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and West Virginia.)
Down at individual level, I’d guess that the correlation between owning a gun and having shot someone dead is quite high?
All your statistic points up is that, if the US had the UK system, where guns are strictly licensed and available on the basis of need, responsible ownership would be concentrated in the rural states. And you’d have more living schoolchildren.
Doesn’t somebody get shot dead in the US on average every ten minutes or so?
Much of the off-top discussion sounds very strange to some one who grew up on a farm in the Western US, decades ago. Restrictions on guns were looser then, to say the least. I bought a .22 rifle when I was 14 or 15, as I recall. I didn't even need my parents permission, much less anything from law enforcement. During harvest season, I sometimes used it, or the family shotgun, to discourage birds from eating our cherries.
We kept a cat for very practical reasons, to control the mice in our house. We also had to protect our trees from mice*, but a single cat could not do that job.
We kept a dog, for companionship, and as a watch dog.
(*In the winter, the mice would often chew the bark on trees, under the snow cover. Since they were chewing at about the same level, they could kill a young tree by chewing the bark, going around the tree. We put screens around the trees to protect the trees.)
This kind of confirms a thought I have. Most UK people think of American gun owners as urban gangstas or cap-wearing enthusiasts who carry whilst shopping in Walmart, but a large proportion of the whole appear to be a man/woman in the country who use it for pest control or for defence against wild animals or bad people in areas where law is few and far between.
There is pretty good evidence that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher rates of gun suicide, accidental deaths from gunshots, gun homicides and police homicides.
Worth noting that half of US gun deaths are suicides. Having guns in the house is dangerous. Many of these suicides are impulsive.
One positive from the fallout of the recent incident is the arrest of the father who gave his teenage son the gun to play about with. If it gets other US parents thinking a bit more responsibly about their potential liability, it won’t be a bad thing.
It is legal for a child to possess a rifle or shotgun in 30 US states
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
The cyclist had right of way. Do you drive or cycle or e-bike or scoot or tricycle? Do you understand how the rules of the road work.
Even if a cyclist had right of way if they were going over 30mph or even over 20mph where that was the limit or driving too fast for the conditions if it was heavy rain say and hit and injured a pedestrian, they could be liable and charged with 'wanton and furious cycling'
I've just watched the video. Good grief. 100% the driver's fault. I can't see any blame attaches itself to the cyclist whatsoever. Looking at the driver's reaction, I think it a simple case of "didn't see". It happens, usually without serious consequence. But I can't see any respect in which this is in any way the cyclist's fault.
The cyclist was clearly cycling too fast and not paying attention, they were also partly to blame
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Dumb to build a restaurant on a slope like that in the first place. You can see he’s struggling to sit upright.
And what's wrong with Malvern water - instead of that furrin muck....
Since Coca Cola closed the bottling plant in Colwall about fifteen years ago Malvern Water is no longer a thing. You can take your own bottles to the various springs along Jubilee Drive, but my recollection is the water, even refrigerated, goes manky after a fairly short time. I believe someone does market a spring water product in exclusively limited numbers so that on this site only Leon could afford to partake of the health giving properties.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
The cyclist had right of way. Do you drive or cycle or e-bike or scoot or tricycle? Do you understand how the rules of the road work.
Even if a cyclist had right of way if they were going over 30mph or even over 20mph where that was the limit or driving too fast for the conditions if it was heavy rain say and hit and injured a pedestrian, they could be liable and charged with 'wanton and furious cycling'
I've just watched the video. Good grief. 100% the driver's fault. I can't see any blame attaches itself to the cyclist whatsoever. Looking at the driver's reaction, I think it a simple case of "didn't see". It happens, usually without serious consequence. But I can't see any respect in which this is in any way the cyclist's fault.
Easy. Drivers vote Tory (or can be made to do so by lies about control of cars in cities). Cyclists don't. That's all some of us need to blame the cyclist.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
The cyclist clearly was not following the rules of the road to the letter otherwise they would not have been cycling as fast as they were and been looking more carefully.
(Gun ownership tends to be higher in rural states, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and West Virginia.)
Down at individual level, I’d guess that the correlation between owning a gun and having shot someone dead is quite high?
All your statistic points up is that, if the US had the UK system, where guns are strictly licensed and available on the basis of need, responsible ownership would be concentrated in the rural states. And you’d have more living schoolchildren.
Doesn’t somebody get shot dead in the US on average every ten minutes or so?
Much of the off-top discussion sounds very strange to some one who grew up on a farm in the Western US, decades ago. Restrictions on guns were looser then, to say the least. I bought a .22 rifle when I was 14 or 15, as I recall. I didn't even need my parents permission, much less anything from law enforcement. During harvest season, I sometimes used it, or the family shotgun, to discourage birds from eating our cherries.
We kept a cat for very practical reasons, to control the mice in our house. We also had to protect our trees from mice*, but a single cat could not do that job.
We kept a dog, for companionship, and as a watch dog.
(*In the winter, the mice would often chew the bark on trees, under the snow cover. Since they were chewing at about the same level, they could kill a young tree by chewing the bark, going around the tree. We put screens around the trees to protect the trees.)
This kind of confirms a thought I have. Most UK people think of American gun owners as urban gangstas or cap-wearing enthusiasts who carry whilst shopping in Walmart, but a large proportion of the whole appear to be a man/woman in the country who use it for pest control or for defence against wild animals or bad people in areas where law is few and far between.
There is pretty good evidence that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher rates of gun suicide, accidental deaths from gunshots, gun homicides and police homicides.
Worth noting that half of US gun deaths are suicides. Having guns in the house is dangerous. Many of these suicides are impulsive.
One positive from the fallout of the recent incident is the arrest of the father who gave his teenage son the gun to play about with. If it gets other US parents thinking a bit more responsibly about their potential liability, it won’t be a bad thing.
It is legal for a child to possess a rifle or shotgun in 30 US states
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
The cyclist had right of way. Do you drive or cycle or e-bike or scoot or tricycle? Do you understand how the rules of the road work.
Even if a cyclist had right of way if they were going over 30mph or even over 20mph where that was the limit or driving too fast for the conditions if it was heavy rain say and hit and injured a pedestrian, they could be liable and charged with 'wanton and furious cycling'
I've just watched the video. Good grief. 100% the driver's fault. I can't see any blame attaches itself to the cyclist whatsoever. Looking at the driver's reaction, I think it a simple case of "didn't see". It happens, usually without serious consequence. But I can't see any respect in which this is in any way the cyclist's fault.
Easy. Drivers vote Tory (or can be made to do so by lies about control of cars in cities). Cyclists don't. That's all some of us need to blame the cyclist.
Well done IDS for trying to introduce a death by dangerous cycling law in the last Parliament and hopefully now he has been re elected he takes it up again
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
Speed limits damn well should apply to bikes!!!!!
I have no disagreement in principle. In practice, you need to fit all bikes with speedometers and have - probably - an annual check that they work. Or require that and nick people when they exceed the limit. But absent number plates on bikes, how would you enforce those speeding penalties?
FWIW, I never overtake free-flowing traffic, so if I'm in a 20 I'll be sticking to 20 if the cars are. I don't tend to trouble 30mph unless going downhill and it's pretty flat around here (there was one part of an old route for my commute where I often cleared 30mph down a long hill, but that was a 40mph stretch of road anyway)
Plates on bikes and speedometers should be mandatory now
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
The cyclist had right of way. Do you drive or cycle or e-bike or scoot or tricycle? Do you understand how the rules of the road work.
Even if a cyclist had right of way if they were going over 30mph or even over 20mph where that was the limit or driving too fast for the conditions if it was heavy rain say and hit and injured a pedestrian, they could be liable and charged with 'wanton and furious cycling'
I've just watched the video. Good grief. 100% the driver's fault. I can't see any blame attaches itself to the cyclist whatsoever. Looking at the driver's reaction, I think it a simple case of "didn't see". It happens, usually without serious consequence. But I can't see any respect in which this is in any way the cyclist's fault.
Easy. Drivers vote Tory (or can be made to do so by lies about control of cars in cities). Cyclists don't. That's all some of us need to blame the cyclist.
I find it remarkable the cyclist didn’t die, from that video & the details in the article.
I think I understand why some people turn religious after experiences like that. I just hope they don’t stumble into hyufd’s church!
The GOP under Trump will become the Government Of Putin...
What did Putin get out of the last Trump presidency?
It is a strangely interesting question about what Putin got out of Trump given he had bought Trump lock, stock and barrel. Maybe he'll cash in the favours next time.
On the subject of driving, earlier this week I needed to renew my US license as I have a new visa. To my immense surprise, it turned out that renewal required redoing the written portion of the test again.
Fortunately, I scraped through (correctly guessing how near one is allowed to park near a fire hydrant). But I did get to hear one of my fellow testers interaction with the staff at the DMV.
"I don't see why I need to do this again, I only passed my test three years ago."
"You lost your license, and you need to retest"
"Yes, but I passed less than three years ago."
"You lost your license because you were driving drunk in a car with no registration or insurance. If you don't want to take your test again, then don't lose your license again"
(Gun ownership tends to be higher in rural states, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and West Virginia.)
Down at individual level, I’d guess that the correlation between owning a gun and having shot someone dead is quite high?
All your statistic points up is that, if the US had the UK system, where guns are strictly licensed and available on the basis of need, responsible ownership would be concentrated in the rural states. And you’d have more living schoolchildren.
Doesn’t somebody get shot dead in the US on average every ten minutes or so?
Much of the off-top discussion sounds very strange to some one who grew up on a farm in the Western US, decades ago. Restrictions on guns were looser then, to say the least. I bought a .22 rifle when I was 14 or 15, as I recall. I didn't even need my parents permission, much less anything from law enforcement. During harvest season, I sometimes used it, or the family shotgun, to discourage birds from eating our cherries.
We kept a cat for very practical reasons, to control the mice in our house. We also had to protect our trees from mice*, but a single cat could not do that job.
We kept a dog, for companionship, and as a watch dog.
(*In the winter, the mice would often chew the bark on trees, under the snow cover. Since they were chewing at about the same level, they could kill a young tree by chewing the bark, going around the tree. We put screens around the trees to protect the trees.)
This kind of confirms a thought I have. Most UK people think of American gun owners as urban gangstas or cap-wearing enthusiasts who carry whilst shopping in Walmart, but a large proportion of the whole appear to be a man/woman in the country who use it for pest control or for defence against wild animals or bad people in areas where law is few and far between.
There is pretty good evidence that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher rates of gun suicide, accidental deaths from gunshots, gun homicides and police homicides.
Worth noting that half of US gun deaths are suicides. Having guns in the house is dangerous. Many of these suicides are impulsive.
One positive from the fallout of the recent incident is the arrest of the father who gave his teenage son the gun to play about with. If it gets other US parents thinking a bit more responsibly about their potential liability, it won’t be a bad thing.
It is legal for a child to possess a rifle or shotgun in 30 US states
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
The cyclist clearly was not following the rules of the road to the letter otherwise they would not have been cycling as fast as they were and been looking more carefully.
Just so we're clear, which letters in the rules of the road are we discussing?
Nigel Farage to become LOTO after the next general election would probably be the likeliest bet although if he was ever going to that do 2024 was probably his best chance and he missed it
So you are predicting both a Labour win and Reform in second place or a Farage reverse takeover of the Tory Party. All plausible HY. All plausible!
Proctologist is a strange one; I'd say it's an insult by Usonians because they are rather more prissy than we are by culture, and wouldn't say ass or arse.
If you look at the Google N-Grams history, it was popular in books from roughly mid-1930s to mid-1960s then 1950s-1980s, then 2000 to ~2020.
(Gun ownership tends to be higher in rural states, Montana, Alaska, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and West Virginia.)
Down at individual level, I’d guess that the correlation between owning a gun and having shot someone dead is quite high?
All your statistic points up is that, if the US had the UK system, where guns are strictly licensed and available on the basis of need, responsible ownership would be concentrated in the rural states. And you’d have more living schoolchildren.
Doesn’t somebody get shot dead in the US on average every ten minutes or so?
Much of the off-top discussion sounds very strange to some one who grew up on a farm in the Western US, decades ago. Restrictions on guns were looser then, to say the least. I bought a .22 rifle when I was 14 or 15, as I recall. I didn't even need my parents permission, much less anything from law enforcement. During harvest season, I sometimes used it, or the family shotgun, to discourage birds from eating our cherries.
We kept a cat for very practical reasons, to control the mice in our house. We also had to protect our trees from mice*, but a single cat could not do that job.
We kept a dog, for companionship, and as a watch dog.
(*In the winter, the mice would often chew the bark on trees, under the snow cover. Since they were chewing at about the same level, they could kill a young tree by chewing the bark, going around the tree. We put screens around the trees to protect the trees.)
This kind of confirms a thought I have. Most UK people think of American gun owners as urban gangstas or cap-wearing enthusiasts who carry whilst shopping in Walmart, but a large proportion of the whole appear to be a man/woman in the country who use it for pest control or for defence against wild animals or bad people in areas where law is few and far between.
There is pretty good evidence that higher rates of gun ownership lead to higher rates of gun suicide, accidental deaths from gunshots, gun homicides and police homicides.
Worth noting that half of US gun deaths are suicides. Having guns in the house is dangerous. Many of these suicides are impulsive.
One positive from the fallout of the recent incident is the arrest of the father who gave his teenage son the gun to play about with. If it gets other US parents thinking a bit more responsibly about their potential liability, it won’t be a bad thing.
It is legal for a child to possess a rifle or shotgun in 30 US states
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
The cyclist clearly was not following the rules of the road to the letter otherwise they would not have been cycling as fast as they were and been looking more carefully.
Just so we're clear, which letters in the rules of the road are we discussing?
I know the light on the TV can be a bit misleading but I am at a loss as to why play has stopped at the Oval. Its not as if the English batsman are finding it difficult. Cricket does itself no favours with rules like this.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
The cyclist clearly was not following the rules of the road to the letter otherwise they would not have been cycling as fast as they were and been looking more carefully.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
As for Farage, no surer way of making him sympathetic than to hijack him at "vulnerable" moments ie eating in a private capacity. Who would like a camera stuck up your nose when you are trying to debone a partridge leg.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
Indeed and if we kept jailing people for it we would soon have to jail almost half the population if not more at one time or other
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
Agreed. The cyclist was doing nothing wrong at all. The fault lies entirely with the car driver. And given that the cyclist suffered serious injuries including a bleed on the brain I do actually think a custodial sentence was justified. We jail people for unintentional manslaughter all the time (indeed we curently have justified calls for that to be applied to those responsible for Grenfell) and given it looks to me like the only reason the cyclist wasn't killed was because she was wearing the correct protective headgear, it seems right and proper that a similar standard should be applied here.
It’s because white British men of middle age and pink-ish face marry younger Thai women, bring them home, and then the women open excellent restaurants
"sadly there’s no market on Farage becoming Donald Trump’s personal proctologist in the next year"
Even if Trump ends up doing time, in theory he would still have to give his consent for that kind of thing, and however keen Farage might appear I doubt that Trump would let him.
Good to see him supporting restaurant and cafe owners in his constituency of Clacton...by eating in Mayfair
I'll bet that every restaurant in Clacton is shit, but I don't know for sure.
Clacton is the sort of place where, if it was in Bulgaria or Greece, it would have a local family-run restaurant with amazing food.
There's a lot of good food in England, but the difference in the distribution is interesting.
I bet there’s at least one good Indian. And probably a Thai. The saviour of many a gastronomically bereft British town
Unfashionable view but I think most Indian and Thai (as well as Chinese) restaurants are poor in this country. They wouldn't pass muster in Delhi, Bangkok or Beijing. You're better off in a gastropub or bistro kind of place where the staff are likely to have had training.
I know the light on the TV can be a bit misleading but I am at a loss as to why play has stopped at the Oval. Its not as if the English batsman are finding it difficult. Cricket does itself no favours with rules like this.
All the more so given that will now be the standard for the next 4 days (if it goes on that long)
Good to see him supporting restaurant and cafe owners in his constituency of Clacton...by eating in Mayfair
I'll bet that every restaurant in Clacton is shit, but I don't know for sure.
Clacton is the sort of place where, if it was in Bulgaria or Greece, it would have a local family-run restaurant with amazing food.
There's a lot of good food in England, but the difference in the distribution is interesting.
I bet there’s at least one good Indian. And probably a Thai. The saviour of many a gastronomically bereft British town
Unfashionable view but I think most Indian and Thai (as well as Chinese) restaurants are poor in this country. They wouldn't pass muster in Delhi, Bangkok or Beijing. You're better off in a gastropub or bistro kind of place where the staff are likely to have had training.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
Agreed. The cyclist was doing nothing wrong at all. The fault lies entirely with the car driver. And given that the cyclist suffered serious injuries including a bleed on the brain I do actually think a custodial sentence was justified. We jail people for unintentional manslaughter all the time (indeed we curently have justified calls for that to be applied to those responsible for Grenfell) and given it looks to me like the only reason the cyclist wasn't killed was because she was wearing the correct protective headgear, it seems right and proper that a similar standard should be applied here.
The cyclist was clearly cycling too fast and not looking properly, the fault was not 100% with the car driver.
Just because the cyclist suffered serious injuries does not mean a custodial sentence was justified at all. Indeed even drivers who killed someone have not gone to jail if not driving dangerously or not at fault before as jail should be based on intent and danger to the public NOT outcome.
We rarely jail people for unintentional corporate manslaughter either, normally at most it is a significant fine.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
The cyclist clearly was not following the rules of the road to the letter otherwise they would not have been cycling as fast as they were and been looking more carefully.
Just so we're clear, which letters in the rules of the road are we discussing?
T junctions on A roads.
The rules are the same for a cyclist as they are for a motorist or a motor cyclist. If this had been a motor cyclist doing 30 on an A road being hit by a car pulling out we certainly wouldmn't be having this conversation.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
Indeed and if we kept jailing people for it we would soon have to jail almost half the population if not more at one time or other
You don't think jail has a deterrent effect?
You don't think - when the driving instructor teaches the student they have to stop at a T junction, look carefully, and consider fast cyclists that might be hidden from view - and warned if you decide to disregard the road rules and cause an accident with a catastrophic result, leaving an entirely innocent lady with a likely brain injury, that not just their licence will be taken away, but their liberty, too - might make them more likely to stick to the road rules, and in future, reduce the prison population?
And leave fewer people with entirely avoidable brain injuries? And worse.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
Speed limits damn well should apply to bikes!!!!!
I have no disagreement in principle. In practice, you need to fit all bikes with speedometers and have - probably - an annual check that they work. Or require that and nick people when they exceed the limit. But absent number plates on bikes, how would you enforce those speeding penalties?
FWIW, I never overtake free-flowing traffic, so if I'm in a 20 I'll be sticking to 20 if the cars are. I don't tend to trouble 30mph unless going downhill and it's pretty flat around here (there was one part of an old route for my commute where I often cleared 30mph down a long hill, but that was a 40mph stretch of road anyway)
Plates on bikes and speedometers should be mandatory now
Should have mandatory plates on pedestrians too, they cause plenty of accidents - especially children!
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
The cyclist clearly was not following the rules of the road to the letter otherwise they would not have been cycling as fast as they were and been looking more carefully.
Just so we're clear, which letters in the rules of the road are we discussing?
T junctions on A roads.
The rules are the same for a cyclist as they are for a motorist or a motor cyclist. If this had been a motor cyclist doing 30 on an A road being hit by a car pulling out we certainly wouldmn't be having this conversation.
No, the driver would have got a community order and driving ban at most I expect
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
Agreed. The cyclist was doing nothing wrong at all. The fault lies entirely with the car driver. And given that the cyclist suffered serious injuries including a bleed on the brain I do actually think a custodial sentence was justified. We jail people for unintentional manslaughter all the time (indeed we curently have justified calls for that to be applied to those responsible for Grenfell) and given it looks to me like the only reason the cyclist wasn't killed was because she was wearing the correct protective headgear, it seems right and proper that a similar standard should be applied here.
The cyclist was clearly cycling too fast and not looking properly, the fault was not 100% with the car driver.
Just because the cyclist suffered serious injuries does not mean a custodial sentence was justified at all. Indeed even drivers who killed someone have not gone to jail if not driving dangerously or not at fault before as jail should be based on intent and danger to the public NOT outcome.
We rarely jail people for unintentional corporate manslaughter either, normally at most it is a significant fine.
What exactly is 'too fast' and where are the rules governing that. The cyclist does not appear to have been exceeding the speed limit so where does it say that they have to travel slower than other riad users?
You seem to like making up non existent rules just becuase they suit your argument.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
Indeed and if we kept jailing people for it we would soon have to jail almost half the population if not more at one time or other
You don't think jail has a deterrent effect?
You don't think - when the driving instructor teaches the student they have to stop at a T junction, look carefully, and consider fast cyclists that might be hidden from view - and warned if you decide to disregard the road rules and cause an accident with a catastrophic result, leaving an entirely innocent lady with a likely brain injury, that not just their licence will be taken away, but their liberty, too - might make them more likely to stick to the road rules, and in future, reduce the prison population?
And leave fewer people with entirely avoidable brain injuries? And worse.
Given most jailed offenders reoffend no, not really. It should primarily be used to protect the public from those who intentionally committed harm and to rehabilitate them more effectively before release.
No. I don't think it would make the slightest difference to these incidents happening either as accidents like this happen all the time and people miss cyclists or motorbikes when pulling out or turning in the road even if they did an initial check just being careless as Darkage states, often when in a hurry for an appointment, to pick up the kids etc
Good to see him supporting restaurant and cafe owners in his constituency of Clacton...by eating in Mayfair
I'll bet that every restaurant in Clacton is shit, but I don't know for sure.
Clacton is the sort of place where, if it was in Bulgaria or Greece, it would have a local family-run restaurant with amazing food.
There's a lot of good food in England, but the difference in the distribution is interesting.
I bet there’s at least one good Indian. And probably a Thai. The saviour of many a gastronomically bereft British town
Just took a look on Tripadviser. There’s a surprisingly decent choice. Top of the rankings is Nikki’s cafe bistro. British-Jamaican.
There’s a Thai of course, and Indians. A quite posh looking steakhouse which I quite fancy visiting.
Decent Turkish and Italian, and several fish restaurants.
Not bad at all. This confirms it’s possible to include Clacton in a very enjoyable mini-tour of political party seats in East Anglia. Through London Labour constituencies to Islington North (independent), then Tory Essex, Clacton (Reform), Waveney valley (green), Great Yarmouth (Ref again), back through Lab and Con to North Norfolk (Lib Dem). 6 parties in an afternoon’s drive.
There are some pretty bleak Italian seaside towns with very little gastronomic to offer.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
Agreed. The cyclist was doing nothing wrong at all. The fault lies entirely with the car driver. And given that the cyclist suffered serious injuries including a bleed on the brain I do actually think a custodial sentence was justified. We jail people for unintentional manslaughter all the time (indeed we curently have justified calls for that to be applied to those responsible for Grenfell) and given it looks to me like the only reason the cyclist wasn't killed was because she was wearing the correct protective headgear, it seems right and proper that a similar standard should be applied here.
The cyclist was clearly cycling too fast and not looking properly, the fault was not 100% with the car driver.
Just because the cyclist suffered serious injuries does not mean a custodial sentence was justified at all. Indeed even drivers who killed someone have not gone to jail if not driving dangerously or not at fault before as jail should be based on intent and danger to the public NOT outcome.
We rarely jail people for unintentional corporate manslaughter either, normally at most it is a significant fine.
What exactly is 'too fast' and where are the rules governing that. The cyclist does not appear to have been exceeding the speed limit so where does it say that they have to travel slower than other riad users?
You seem to like making up non existent rules just becuase they suit your argument.
Even if not too fast the cyclist was clearly not looking properly enough either
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
The cyclist clearly was not following the rules of the road to the letter otherwise they would not have been cycling as fast as they were and been looking more carefully.
Just so we're clear, which letters in the rules of the road are we discussing?
T junctions on A roads.
The rules are the same for a cyclist as they are for a motorist or a motor cyclist. If this had been a motor cyclist doing 30 on an A road being hit by a car pulling out we certainly wouldmn't be having this conversation.
Richard Keys has zero legs to stand on when it comes to any moral ruminations.....from racist and sexist comments, to having affair / maryying with his daughters best friend, to taking the Qatari big bucks.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
The cyclist had right of way. Do you drive or cycle or e-bike or scoot or tricycle? Do you understand how the rules of the road work.
Even if a cyclist had right of way if they were going over 30mph or even over 20mph where that was the limit or driving too fast for the conditions if it was heavy rain say and hit and injured a pedestrian, they could be liable and charged with 'wanton and furious cycling'
I've just watched the video. Good grief. 100% the driver's fault. I can't see any blame attaches itself to the cyclist whatsoever. Looking at the driver's reaction, I think it a simple case of "didn't see". It happens, usually without serious consequence. But I can't see any respect in which this is in any way the cyclist's fault.
The cyclist was clearly cycling too fast and not paying attention, they were also partly to blame
As a cyclist I went in with a preconceived view that @hyufd was wrong, but on viewing the video I have sympathy for the driver. The driver was in the wrong, but at worst it was careless driving as the cyclist was hammering along and I could imagine making the same mistake as a driver. It could be argued that the cyclist was a bit reckless passing a junction at that speed.
Good to see him supporting restaurant and cafe owners in his constituency of Clacton...by eating in Mayfair
I'll bet that every restaurant in Clacton is shit, but I don't know for sure.
Clacton is the sort of place where, if it was in Bulgaria or Greece, it would have a local family-run restaurant with amazing food.
There's a lot of good food in England, but the difference in the distribution is interesting.
I bet there’s at least one good Indian. And probably a Thai. The saviour of many a gastronomically bereft British town
Unfashionable view but I think most Indian and Thai (as well as Chinese) restaurants are poor in this country. They wouldn't pass muster in Delhi, Bangkok or Beijing. You're better off in a gastropub or bistro kind of place where the staff are likely to have had training.
My experience in Delhi and Beijing (I’ve not been to Thailand) is that the food there - like for like - really isn’t dissimilar to what you find in Britain. I’ve had some shit stuff in both, and some very good stuff. Just like here. .
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
Agreed. The cyclist was doing nothing wrong at all. The fault lies entirely with the car driver. And given that the cyclist suffered serious injuries including a bleed on the brain I do actually think a custodial sentence was justified. We jail people for unintentional manslaughter all the time (indeed we curently have justified calls for that to be applied to those responsible for Grenfell) and given it looks to me like the only reason the cyclist wasn't killed was because she was wearing the correct protective headgear, it seems right and proper that a similar standard should be applied here.
The argument is not one about consistency with other sentences, it is whether imprisonment in this (or similar) situation is objectively the right thing to do. If you want to do it to attend to some kind of popular instinct in the population for 'moral justice' then you can, but it comes at a significant practical cost with no real benefit.
What actually happens though is people don't want to think about the costs and consequences, they just like to think of it as a straightforward question of 'x years for x crime'. It is a feature of what could be described as the 'populist mind virus'.
Good to see him supporting restaurant and cafe owners in his constituency of Clacton...by eating in Mayfair
I'll bet that every restaurant in Clacton is shit, but I don't know for sure.
Clacton is the sort of place where, if it was in Bulgaria or Greece, it would have a local family-run restaurant with amazing food.
There's a lot of good food in England, but the difference in the distribution is interesting.
I bet there’s at least one good Indian. And probably a Thai. The saviour of many a gastronomically bereft British town
Just took a look on Tripadviser. There’s a surprisingly decent choice. Top of the rankings is Nikki’s cafe bistro. British-Jamaican.
There’s a Thai of course, and Indians. A quite posh looking steakhouse which I quite fancy visiting.
Decent Turkish and Italian, and several fish restaurants.
Not bad at all. This confirms it’s possible to include Clacton in a very enjoyable mini-tour of political party seats in East Anglia. Through London Labour constituencies to Islington North (independent), then Tory Essex, Clacton (Reform), Waveney valley (green), Great Yarmouth (Ref again), back through Lab and Con to North Norfolk (Lib Dem). 6 parties in an afternoon’s drive.
There are some pretty bleak Italian seaside towns with very little gastronomic to offer.
You can probably eat better in Clacton than 100 French towns which are far more beautiful but will have 5 restaurants serving the same frozen and poor French food, one mediocre Chinese and a weirdly bad Vietnamese. Your saviour will be ok pizza
I think I have must have dined at all the wrong places, I have never had a really good Thai meal in a regional town in the UK. Had far better ones in strip mall restaurants in the small town America.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Of course had it been a cyclist cycling too fast who killed or seriously injured a pedestrian they could have been done for neither death or serious injury by dangerous cycling or death or serious injury by careless cycling as no laws exist for those unlike for driving. Hence IDS' bill is so vital to ensure cyclists who kill or seriously injure are held accountable as much as drivers are
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Ran out of my own time. A couple of further notes.
Some PBers will disagree on aspects, but that's my take.
I think the role of deterrence in these sentences is particularly important, because we have a road culture where causing serious injury to pedestrian, cyclists, motor cyclists by careless, reckless, dangerous or negligent driving is deemed acceptable or trivial, and driving is deemed to be a human right, which it is not.
I think I have must have dined at all the wrong places, I have never had a really good Thai meal in a regional town in the UK. Had far better ones in strip mall restaurants in the small town America.
Indian is much the safest bet in the English provinces.
I think I have must have dined at all the wrong places, I have never had a really good Thai meal in a regional town in the UK. Had far better ones in strip mall restaurants in the small town America.
Really?? I’ve had great Thai right across the UK
There are loads of Thai people - especially women - in the UK. They open restaurants and the great British public, these days, has refined tastes in curry and tom yam
Funnily enough the worst Thai I’ve had has been in the USA. Unbelievably bad in Los Angeles etc
I think I have must have dined at all the wrong places, I have never had a really good Thai meal in a regional town in the UK. Had far better ones in strip mall restaurants in the small town America.
Indian is much the safest bet in the English provinces.
But we keep being told if we don't import another 10,000 Bangladeshis chefs every year it won't be possible....
The best Chinese takeaway chain I used to frequent turned out to be a massive money laundering operation.....they should have just stuck to doing really good food.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Ran out of my own time. A couple of further notes.
Some PBers will disagree on aspects, but that's my take.
I think the role of deterrence in these sentences is particularly important, because we have a road culture where causing serious injury to pedestrian, cyclists, motor cyclists by careless, reckless, dangerous or negligent driving is deemed acceptable or trivial, and driving is deemed to be a human right, which it is not.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Dumb to build a restaurant on a slope like that in the first place. You can see he’s struggling to sit upright.
And what's wrong with Malvern water - instead of that furrin muck....
Since Coca Cola closed the bottling plant in Colwall about fifteen years ago Malvern Water is no longer a thing. You can take your own bottles to the various springs along Jubilee Drive, but my recollection is the water, even refrigerated, goes manky after a fairly short time. I believe someone does market a spring water product in exclusively limited numbers so that on this site only Leon could afford to partake of the health giving properties.
Only gone 15 years? Thought it might be hankering after a Reformy golden age of decades past...
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
The cyclist had right of way. Do you drive or cycle or e-bike or scoot or tricycle? Do you understand how the rules of the road work.
Even if a cyclist had right of way if they were going over 30mph or even over 20mph where that was the limit or driving too fast for the conditions if it was heavy rain say and hit and injured a pedestrian, they could be liable and charged with 'wanton and furious cycling'
I've just watched the video. Good grief. 100% the driver's fault. I can't see any blame attaches itself to the cyclist whatsoever. Looking at the driver's reaction, I think it a simple case of "didn't see". It happens, usually without serious consequence. But I can't see any respect in which this is in any way the cyclist's fault.
The cyclist was clearly cycling too fast and not paying attention, they were also partly to blame
As a cyclist I went in with a preconceived view that @hyufd was wrong, but on viewing the video I have sympathy for the driver. The driver was in the wrong, but at worst it was careless driving as the cyclist was hammering along and I could imagine making the same mistake as a driver. It could be argued that the cyclist was a bit reckless passing a junction at that speed.
Would you say a car driver or motorcyclist would have been in the wrong in passing a junction at that speed (thanks to MattW we know it was 19 MPH)
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Of course had it been a cyclist cycling too fast who killed or seriously injured a pedestrian they could have been done for neither death or serious injury by dangerous cycling or death or serious injury by careless cycling as no laws exist for those unlike for driving. Hence IDS' bill is so vital to ensure cyclists who kill or seriously injure are held accountable as much as drivers are
Not so, they just use old legislation from Victorian times,
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
Agreed. The cyclist was doing nothing wrong at all. The fault lies entirely with the car driver. And given that the cyclist suffered serious injuries including a bleed on the brain I do actually think a custodial sentence was justified. We jail people for unintentional manslaughter all the time (indeed we curently have justified calls for that to be applied to those responsible for Grenfell) and given it looks to me like the only reason the cyclist wasn't killed was because she was wearing the correct protective headgear, it seems right and proper that a similar standard should be applied here.
The cyclist was clearly cycling too fast and not looking properly, the fault was not 100% with the car driver.
Just because the cyclist suffered serious injuries does not mean a custodial sentence was justified at all. Indeed even drivers who killed someone have not gone to jail if not driving dangerously or not at fault before as jail should be based on intent and danger to the public NOT outcome.
We rarely jail people for unintentional corporate manslaughter either, normally at most it is a significant fine.
What exactly is 'too fast' and where are the rules governing that. The cyclist does not appear to have been exceeding the speed limit so where does it say that they have to travel slower than other riad users?
You seem to like making up non existent rules just becuase they suit your argument.
Even if not too fast the cyclist was clearly not looking properly enough either
1) How do you know? 2) If the cyclist had decided not to look where she was going but insteaf at the car which was about to hit her, what could she have done differently? Evasive action is almost impossible. 3) It really, really isn't the responsibility of the cyclist to avoid any road user who might try to drive into her.
Donald Trump's sentencing in his Manhattan hush money criminal trial has been postponed until after the November election.
Justice Juan Merchan of Friday delayed the sentencing to 26 November, citing "the unique time frame this matter currently finds itself in" among his reasons.
Something that struck me about the BBC bit about HMP Pentonville, the number of female prison officers, many who were quite small. That doesn't seem optimal in a prison stuff full of the worst and most violent criminals.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
Indeed and if we kept jailing people for it we would soon have to jail almost half the population if not more at one time or other
Are you actually a driver because you sound like an armchair one
I do not know anything of the case being discussed, but at 80 I have been actively driving since I was 17, have not had any traffic offence convictions, fines or even parking tickets but then I do take driving seriously and certainly do not accept any driver can have a lapse of concentration whilst driving, and still expect to keep their licence
Since the new regulations, I always give cyclists a wide berth and are courteous to them as I am with pedestrians
It is true that cyclists exceeding the speed limit seems unfair, and I do think they should have insurance but all road users are entitled to use the road and respect each other
I should say I have an annual eye test and have notified the DVLA of my pacemaker, and I would urge all drivers to be conscious of their legal duty to inform the DVLA if they have sight or notifiable health issues
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Ran out of my own time. A couple of further notes.
Some PBers will disagree on aspects, but that's my take.
I think the role of deterrence in these sentences is particularly important, because we have a road culture where causing serious injury to pedestrian, cyclists, motor cyclists by careless, reckless, dangerous or negligent driving is deemed acceptable or trivial, and driving is deemed to be a human right, which it is not.
A classic case of whataboutism. As it happens I agree that Cyclists should be jailed for killing or seriously injuring someone due to their own negligence. But I am consistent in also believing this should apply to drivers who do the same thing. Your nasty little vendetta against cyclists is no excuse to let car drivers off when they break the law. Thakfully both the police and the courts apparently agree with me in this instance.
I read the discussion about carbonara sauce the other day with interest
I believe that one of my first posts on here was the proper recipe
I don't care that the recipe is only eighty years old; cream is still not an acceptable ingredient
Nobody’s forcing you to use cream (which is exactly the same stuff as unsalted butter, with a bit more moisture).
The world changes and so do recipes. Anti-miscegenation rules tend to fail after a while, in food as in life.
Whatever next, pineapple on pizza....
I was wondering the other day as I watched an episode of the late Anthony Bourdain in Hawaii whether terroir and locality means pineapple pizza on the islands is considered correct, and acceptable to Italians. Sadly Bourdain didn’t go there, he spent his time eating Japanese fusion stuff.
I like a Hawaiian pizza. By all objective standards it’s a classic marriage of pork and tangy fruit. It just happens to be on a piece of flat bread with cheese.
I’m making Khinkali and khachapuri for the family this evening but of course bastardising the ingredients, with mozzarella mixed with cheddar and Turkish cheese in the Adjaran kachapuri, and MSG in the khinkali.
Trump is likely to have a meltdown when the US Fed cuts interest rates at their September meeting.
Today’s non-farm payrolls show a softening of the job market but not so bad that there’s talk of a recession . So for Harris an interest rate cut and inflation pressures easing are a help going into November .
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Of course had it been a cyclist cycling too fast who killed or seriously injured a pedestrian they could have been done for neither death or serious injury by dangerous cycling or death or serious injury by careless cycling as no laws exist for those unlike for driving. Hence IDS' bill is so vital to ensure cyclists who kill or seriously injure are held accountable as much as drivers are
Not so, they just use old legislation from Victorian times,
Trump is likely to have a meltdown when the US Fed cuts interest rates at their September meeting.
Today’s non-farm payrolls show a softening of the job market but not so bad that there’s talk of a recession . So for Harris an interest rate cut and inflation pressures easing are a help going into November .
Isn't Trump and meltdown a daily occurrence anyway
Good to see him supporting restaurant and cafe owners in his constituency of Clacton...by eating in Mayfair
I'll bet that every restaurant in Clacton is shit, but I don't know for sure.
Clacton is the sort of place where, if it was in Bulgaria or Greece, it would have a local family-run restaurant with amazing food.
There's a lot of good food in England, but the difference in the distribution is interesting.
I bet there’s at least one good Indian. And probably a Thai. The saviour of many a gastronomically bereft British town
Unfashionable view but I think most Indian and Thai (as well as Chinese) restaurants are poor in this country. They wouldn't pass muster in Delhi, Bangkok or Beijing. You're better off in a gastropub or bistro kind of place where the staff are likely to have had training.
My experience in Delhi and Beijing (I’ve not been to Thailand) is that the food there - like for like - really isn’t dissimilar to what you find in Britain. I’ve had some shit stuff in both, and some very good stuff. Just like here. .
If I take Edinburgh, which is a reasonably sophisticated city, I would say there are probably two or three actually good Indian restaurants (Dishoom is one I eat at and the only restaurant my Indian colleagues will go to), seven or eight acceptable ones, the rest are poor. There are three or four acceptable but no really good Thai restaurants. The better Chinese restaurants tend to be hole in the wall places exclusively serving Chinese students. If you head out to the suburbs you will struggle to find even acceptable ethnic food. By contrast there are a good two dozen Scottish/French fine dining places of the same standard as Dishoom.
My benchmark for acceptable is what I cook every day without trying very hard. I'm looking for something more refined when I eat out.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Zero blame can be afforded to the cyclist in that collision. They were going at below the speed limit (which doesn't apply to them) and had no time to react to the late maneuver from the driver. I hope they've rinsed the driver's insurance for damages.
It's pure bigotry from you, I'm afraid. If you think that's "very fast", it looks like Epping will be getting blanket 10mph speed limits in the near future.
Oddly enough, I also agree that it should be a shorter sentence, or none at all. But it should be a much, much longer driving ban.
Wrong, blame can be apportioned to that cyclist who was clearly going very fast along the road without looking properly too and if they had hit a pedestrian crossing the road rather than a car would have caused that pedestrian serious injury.
I agree though driving ban at most not prison for the driver
Ladies & Gentlemen: car brain in action.
A cyclist follows the rules of the road to the letter yet is blamed for an crash that they could neither predict nor control caused by a car driver who utterly failed to yield the right of way as they were required to by both the rules of the road & their duty of care to other road users.
One can reasonably argue about whether a custodial sentence is appropriate in this case. Arguing that the cyclist bore any responsibility for this crash is simply car-centric, driver responsibility minimising thinking that should not stand.
Agreed. The cyclist was doing nothing wrong at all. The fault lies entirely with the car driver. And given that the cyclist suffered serious injuries including a bleed on the brain I do actually think a custodial sentence was justified. We jail people for unintentional manslaughter all the time (indeed we curently have justified calls for that to be applied to those responsible for Grenfell) and given it looks to me like the only reason the cyclist wasn't killed was because she was wearing the correct protective headgear, it seems right and proper that a similar standard should be applied here.
The cyclist was clearly cycling too fast and not looking properly, the fault was not 100% with the car driver.
Just because the cyclist suffered serious injuries does not mean a custodial sentence was justified at all. Indeed even drivers who killed someone have not gone to jail if not driving dangerously or not at fault before as jail should be based on intent and danger to the public NOT outcome.
We rarely jail people for unintentional corporate manslaughter either, normally at most it is a significant fine.
What exactly is 'too fast' and where are the rules governing that. The cyclist does not appear to have been exceeding the speed limit so where does it say that they have to travel slower than other riad users?
You seem to like making up non existent rules just becuase they suit your argument.
Even if not too fast the cyclist was clearly not looking properly enough either
1) How do you know? 2) If the cyclist had decided not to look where she was going but insteaf at the car which was about to hit her, what could she have done differently? Evasive action is almost impossible. 3) It really, really isn't the responsibility of the cyclist to avoid any road user who might try to drive into her.
She should certainly have slowed down approaching the junction rather than continue at full pelt as she did
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
Indeed and if we kept jailing people for it we would soon have to jail almost half the population if not more at one time or other
Are you actually a driver because you sound like an armchair one
I do not know anything of the case being discussed, but at 80 I have been actively driving since I was 17, have not had any traffic offence convictions, fines or even parking tickets but then I do take driving seriously and certainly do not accept any driver can have a lapse of concentration whilst driving, and still expect to keep their licence
Since the new regulations, I always give cyclists a wide berth and are courteous to them as I am with pedestrians
It is true that cyclists exceeding the speed limit seems unfair, and I do think they should have insurance but all road users are entitled to use the road and respect each other
I should say I have an annual eye test and have notified the DVLA of my pacemaker, and I would urge all drivers to be conscious of their legal duty to inform the DVLA if they have sight or notifiable health issues
Good for you but I would suspect more than half of drivers have had at least one traffic offence conviction, fine or parking ticket
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Ran out of my own time. A couple of further notes.
Some PBers will disagree on aspects, but that's my take.
I think the role of deterrence in these sentences is particularly important, because we have a road culture where causing serious injury to pedestrian, cyclists, motor cyclists by careless, reckless, dangerous or negligent driving is deemed acceptable or trivial, and driving is deemed to be a human right, which it is not.
A classic case of whataboutism. As it happens I agree that Cyclists should be jailed for killing or seriously injuring someone due to their own negligence. But I am consistent in also believing this should apply to drivers who do the same thing. Your nasty little vendetta against cyclists is no excuse to let car drivers off when they break the law. Thakfully both the police and the courts apparently agree with me in this instance.
I also would not jail cyclists riding carelessly either anymore than drivers, only if either were driving dangerously or well well over the legal alcohol or drug limit. However there is not even a death or serious injury by dangerous cycling law let alone for careless cycling
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
Indeed and if we kept jailing people for it we would soon have to jail almost half the population if not more at one time or other
Are you actually a driver because you sound like an armchair one
I do not know anything of the case being discussed, but at 80 I have been actively driving since I was 17, have not had any traffic offence convictions, fines or even parking tickets but then I do take driving seriously and certainly do not accept any driver can have a lapse of concentration whilst driving, and still expect to keep their licence
Since the new regulations, I always give cyclists a wide berth and are courteous to them as I am with pedestrians
It is true that cyclists exceeding the speed limit seems unfair, and I do think they should have insurance but all road users are entitled to use the road and respect each other
I should say I have an annual eye test and have notified the DVLA of my pacemaker, and I would urge all drivers to be conscious of their legal duty to inform the DVLA if they have sight or notifiable health issues
Good for you but I would suspect more than half of drivers have had at least one traffic offence conviction, fine or parking ticket
I am not suggesting they haven't, and maybe I have been lucky, but to be honest you are not making a good case and best for cup of tea time on this one
Trump is likely to have a meltdown when the US Fed cuts interest rates at their September meeting.
Today’s non-farm payrolls show a softening of the job market but not so bad that there’s talk of a recession . So for Harris an interest rate cut and inflation pressures easing are a help going into November .
Isn't Trump and meltdown a daily occurrence anyway
True but he’s going to go into major meltdown mode . The last thing he wants is the Fed cutting interest rates . In other US news Gavin Newsom has done Harris a huge favour by vetoing legislation in California that would have provided an open goal to the GOP .
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
I don't know what the term of imprisonment should be for that ^ but I think imprisonment is a morally correct outcome. You don't, Why?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
What is shown above is the type of offence that can happen to almost anyone when there is a lapse of concentration. He just didn't see the cyclist - failed to look properly, the single biggest cause of accidents as I understand it. I've had several similar near misses in my time cycling. Sending someone to prison in this situation serves no purpose,. These lapses of concentration that go on all the time, sometimes unfortunately they end up in accidents. It is basically just a hazard of having people driving cars.
Indeed and if we kept jailing people for it we would soon have to jail almost half the population if not more at one time or other
You don't think jail has a deterrent effect?
You don't think - when the driving instructor teaches the student they have to stop at a T junction, look carefully, and consider fast cyclists that might be hidden from view - and warned if you decide to disregard the road rules and cause an accident with a catastrophic result, leaving an entirely innocent lady with a likely brain injury, that not just their licence will be taken away, but their liberty, too - might make them more likely to stick to the road rules, and in future, reduce the prison population?
And leave fewer people with entirely avoidable brain injuries? And worse.
Given most jailed offenders reoffend no, not really. It should primarily be used to protect the public from those who intentionally committed harm and to rehabilitate them more effectively before release.
No. I don't think it would make the slightest difference to these incidents happening either as accidents like this happen all the time and people miss cyclists or motorbikes when pulling out or turning in the road even if they did an initial check just being careless as Darkage states, often when in a hurry for an appointment, to pick up the kids etc
BTW: can you remind me of your opinions on the cyclist who accidentally killed a pedestrian in Regent's Park.
He’s already a poor but amusing parody of himself with elements of desperate late Gordon Brown
“Keir Starmer vows to stop people-smuggling gangs with tactics used to jail rioters
“We sat round the table with law enforcement and the police to make sure that we got the desired outcome and made sure we could deliver – in that case – swift justice.
“I’m absolutely determined to take the same approach here, active government, an operational summit, making sure that we are going to retake control of our borders, take these gangs down,” he said.“
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Of course had it been a cyclist cycling too fast who killed or seriously injured a pedestrian they could have been done for neither death or serious injury by dangerous cycling or death or serious injury by careless cycling as no laws exist for those unlike for driving. Hence IDS' bill is so vital to ensure cyclists who kill or seriously injure are held accountable as much as drivers are
Not so, they just use old legislation from Victorian times,
Trump is likely to have a meltdown when the US Fed cuts interest rates at their September meeting.
Today’s non-farm payrolls show a softening of the job market but not so bad that there’s talk of a recession . So for Harris an interest rate cut and inflation pressures easing are a help going into November .
Isn't Trump and meltdown a daily occurrence anyway
True but he’s going to go into major meltdown mode . The last thing he wants is the Fed cutting interest rates . In other US news Gavin Newsom has done Harris a huge favour by vetoing legislation in California that would have provided an open goal to the GOP .
I am very relaxed now Harris has replaced Biden, and just find Trumps meltdowns pathetic and he will lose by quite a margin in November
Please do not worry about Trump, it will be over for him soon
Richard Keys has zero legs to stand on when it comes to any moral ruminations.....from racist and sexist comments, to having affair / maryying with his daughters best friend, to taking the Qatari big bucks.
What's wrong with marrying one's daughter's best friend? It seems like a good way to see more of your kids when they get older.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I won't be marrying my daughter's best friend. Firstly, I'm happily married already. Secondly, she has higher standards.)
I believe that, in principle, one is supposed to drive so that you are able to stop in the distance you can see, and to be able to stop in case someone else on the road does something stupid.
This would mean talking the bends of many country roads at about 10mph, and slowing down to about that speed while passing junctions, so that you could safely stop in case someone else did something dangerous.
In practice no-one does that. Everyone takes it on trust that people won't stop in the middle of the road by a blind bend, or pull out from a side road right in front of you. That's what the cyclist did in that video.
Something similar happened to me, though thankfully at a lower speed. But I found it so hard to go past cars at junctions after that, because of not knowing if they would pull into me without me being able to evade them, that I almost completely stopped cycling on the roads, and only cycled on off-road paths and short bits of road that connected them.
People need to remember that driving is a privilege and not a right. It's a privilege that people should lose if they demonstrate that they are not safe to enjoy that privilege.
I don't see why that driver should be driving again in two years.
He’s already a poor but amusing parody of himself with elements of desperate late Gordon Brown
“Keir Starmer vows to stop people-smuggling gangs with tactics used to jail rioters
“We sat round the table with law enforcement and the police to make sure that we got the desired outcome and made sure we could deliver – in that case – swift justice.
“I’m absolutely determined to take the same approach here, active government, an operational summit, making sure that we are going to retake control of our borders, take these gangs down,” he said.“
Richard Keys has zero legs to stand on when it comes to any moral ruminations.....from racist and sexist comments, to having affair / maryying with his daughters best friend, to taking the Qatari big bucks.
What's wrong with marrying one's daughter's best friend? It seems like a good way to see more of your kids when they get older.
(For the avoidance of doubt, I won't be marrying my daughter's best friend. Firstly, I'm happily married already. Secondly, she has higher standards.)
If I remember correctly the daughter will now have nothing to do with him.
No wonder when we are jailing people for tweets made rather than giving them community orders and fines. Prison should be mainly for those who have killed with intent, killed while dangerous driving, committed violent crimes or serious sexual offences of assault or rape or stolen large amounts of property ie those we need to protect society from and who need a long period of rehabilitation before they are released.
The number of people jailed for tweets is very small and is not why the prison population is at a record high.
We are also jailing some people for careless driving who stopped at the scene, weren't drunk or on drugs or speeding and sometimes didn't kill as well. Another offence which should have a community order or suspended sentence only as the maximum not an immediate jail term
I'm interested in your logic. Surely, morally, imprisonment can't exclusively require intent? The outcome, there, ^ was catastrophic and avoidable. The road rules are there for a reason and have to be enforced, right?
If that happened to you, or a loved one, surely you would expect your society/government to exact some form of visible punishment?
BTW, credit to the family who (presumably?) allowed that video to be released.
Imprisonment should largely require intent yes or extreme gross negligence at most. The outcome there was a cyclist riding very fast was hit by a driver who failed to see them but was not drunk, had no drugs in their system, was not speeding and stopped at the scene.
If that happened to me or a loved one I would expect a community order or a suspended sentence as the maximum, prison should be confined to those who are genuinely dangerous or pose a serious threat to society as I said
Have you watched the video and read the article?
Do you think the cyclist did something wrong?
Aren't people who disregard the road rules a serious threat to society?
Yes I have watched the video and read the article and the cyclist was riding very fast clearly without looking properly as well.
The driver should also have stopped for longer and looked more closely but the cyclist was not without fault either.
So no, a driver who was not speeding very fast and not on drugs or drunk and not doing an illegal manoeuvre on a motorway say is not a serious threat to society no and should not be in prison. At most a community order and driving ban for a few years would suffice
Come on, the cyclist had right of way. Are you seriously claiming, that if it was the other way round - if the cyclist had come out of the side road without checking properly and got flattened by a car coming along the priority road, you blame the driver?
That said, it was impressively fast for a lady in her 70s! Speed limits don't apply to bikes, but if she was doing well over the (motorised vehicle) speed limit then I'd have some sympathy that cyclist had some fault. But if that's a 30 then it's unlikely.
That's a downhill, and she was doing ~19mph (ie not fast) as measured from the video and physical features locatable from Google Maps. There was quite a lot of interest at the time; quite a few people were surprised that the grossly neglectful driver received a very rare appropriate punishment. You get to 30mph+ at that location just by freewheeling, from comments by people who are from the area.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Of course had it been a cyclist cycling too fast who killed or seriously injured a pedestrian they could have been done for neither death or serious injury by dangerous cycling or death or serious injury by careless cycling as no laws exist for those unlike for driving. Hence IDS' bill is so vital to ensure cyclists who kill or seriously injure are held accountable as much as drivers are
That's not true, cyclists have been successfully prosecuted (and imprisoned) in the past under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
Trump is likely to have a meltdown when the US Fed cuts interest rates at their September meeting.
Today’s non-farm payrolls show a softening of the job market but not so bad that there’s talk of a recession . So for Harris an interest rate cut and inflation pressures easing are a help going into November .
Isn't Trump and meltdown a daily occurrence anyway
True but he’s going to go into major meltdown mode . The last thing he wants is the Fed cutting interest rates . In other US news Gavin Newsom has done Harris a huge favour by vetoing legislation in California that would have provided an open goal to the GOP .
I am very relaxed now Harris has replaced Biden, and just find Trumps meltdowns pathetic and he will lose by quite a margin in November
Please do not worry about Trump, it will be over for him soon
He’s already a poor but amusing parody of himself with elements of desperate late Gordon Brown
“Keir Starmer vows to stop people-smuggling gangs with tactics used to jail rioters
“We sat round the table with law enforcement and the police to make sure that we got the desired outcome and made sure we could deliver – in that case – swift justice.
“I’m absolutely determined to take the same approach here, active government, an operational summit, making sure that we are going to retake control of our borders, take these gangs down,” he said.“
Comments
I think I understand why some people turn religious after experiences like that. I just hope they don’t stumble into hyufd’s church!
hhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials
Fortunately, I scraped through (correctly guessing how near one is allowed to park near a fire hydrant). But I did get to hear one of my fellow testers interaction with the staff at the DMV.
"I don't see why I need to do this again, I only passed my test three years ago."
"You lost your license, and you need to retest"
"Yes, but I passed less than three years ago."
"You lost your license because you were driving drunk in a car with no registration or insurance. If you don't want to take your test again, then don't lose your license again"
If you look at the Google N-Grams history, it was popular in books from roughly mid-1930s to mid-1960s then 1950s-1980s, then 2000 to ~2020.
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=proctologist&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3
If it had many rhymes, Tom Lehrer would perhaps have used it a lot in his songs
https://x.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1832104295438967241
4.7 on Tripadvisor
https://www.thaivintage.co.uk/
It’s because white British men of middle age and pink-ish face marry younger Thai women, bring them home, and then the women open excellent restaurants
Even if Trump ends up doing time, in theory he would still have to give his consent for that kind of thing, and however keen Farage might appear I doubt that Trump would let him.
Will the stain on humanity ever be held to account ?
Just because the cyclist suffered serious injuries does not mean a custodial sentence was justified at all. Indeed even drivers who killed someone have not gone to jail if not driving dangerously or not at fault before as jail should be based on intent and danger to the public NOT outcome.
We rarely jail people for unintentional corporate manslaughter either, normally at most it is a significant fine.
You don't think - when the driving instructor teaches the student they have to stop at a T junction, look carefully, and consider fast cyclists that might be hidden from view - and warned if you decide to disregard the road rules and cause an accident with a catastrophic result, leaving an entirely innocent lady with a likely brain injury, that not just their licence will be taken away, but their liberty, too - might make them more likely to stick to the road rules, and in future, reduce the prison population?
And leave fewer people with entirely avoidable brain injuries? And worse.
You seem to like making up non existent rules just becuase they suit your argument.
My view is that he probably pled the prospect of Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving (in this case broken bones and a bleed on the brain) down to the same for Careless by offering a guilty plea in the hope that he would avoid prison, which is mandatory for CSIDD with a minimum of 26 weeks; that's perhaps what a lawyer would suggest, and is a standard tactic. CSIDD is more difficult to prove, due to case law.
The camera makes it look as though she was cycling uphill not downhill. It is it Brookside Avenue and Wildcroft Avenue in Coventry. This link is the driver's eye view.
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.4116128,-1.5554666,3a,63.7y,180.43h,73.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s1cSkJ17jmZAVg6ZUJ9rZNQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDkwMy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw==
A junction with clear views, and the driver's error was in not pausing when he was unsighted for 1-2 seconds by preceding vehicles, but driving straight into space he could not see to be safe before he made his decision to proceed. That in my book is "far below the standard to be expected of a competent and careful driver", and therefore Dangerous not Careless.
There was the usual concern in debates at the time to find a way ... any way ... to blame the cyclist to avoid looking the behaviour of the driver in the eye, "Going too fast", "Should have slowed down" .. Yada Yada Yada. Some demanding there was no fault and it was an "accident".
One interesting one is that an activist called Alan Myles (from Edinburgh) dubbed a car into the video instead of the cyclist, and suddenly some people thought it was a different collision, and I don't think anyone was rabbiting on about how the car should have slowed down.
Motornormativity.
https://x.com/AlanMyles8/status/1741601386947576057
No. I don't think it would make the slightest difference to these incidents happening either as accidents like this happen all the time and people miss cyclists or motorbikes when pulling out or turning in the road even if they did an initial check just being careless as Darkage states, often when in a hurry for an appointment, to pick up the kids etc
There’s a Thai of course, and Indians. A quite posh looking steakhouse which I quite fancy visiting.
Decent Turkish and Italian, and several fish restaurants.
Not bad at all. This confirms it’s possible to include Clacton in a very enjoyable mini-tour of political party seats in East Anglia. Through London Labour constituencies to Islington North (independent), then Tory Essex, Clacton (Reform), Waveney valley (green), Great Yarmouth (Ref again), back through Lab and Con to North Norfolk (Lib Dem). 6 parties in an afternoon’s drive.
There are some pretty bleak Italian seaside towns with very little gastronomic to offer.
I believe that one of my first posts on here was the proper recipe
I don't care that the recipe is only eighty years old; cream is still not an acceptable ingredient
.
What actually happens though is people don't want to think about the costs and consequences, they just like to think of it as a straightforward question of 'x years for x crime'. It is a feature of what could be described as the 'populist mind virus'.
The world changes and so do recipes. Anti-miscegenation rules tend to fail after a while, in food as in life.
Some PBers will disagree on aspects, but that's my take.
I think the role of deterrence in these sentences is particularly important, because we have a road culture where causing serious injury to pedestrian, cyclists, motor cyclists by careless, reckless, dangerous or negligent driving is deemed acceptable or trivial, and driving is deemed to be a human right, which it is not.
Road.cc thread from the time, with a range of views:
https://road.cc/content/news/shocking-video-shows-driver-crashing-cyclist-305875
There are loads of Thai people - especially women - in the UK. They open restaurants and the great British public, these days, has refined tastes in curry and tom yam
Funnily enough the worst Thai I’ve had has been in the USA. Unbelievably bad in Los Angeles etc
🤬🤬🤬🤬
I'll keep splashing in water until the berries break up and it's boiled right down
Hen I'll add black mustard seeds for the last couple of minutes
I've never made it before, but it sounds good with bacon and brie
https://road.cc/content/news/no-charges-cyclist-after-crash-which-oap-was-killed-308209
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx88g1v8en7o
I need to hack my way into the end of the garden to find out how the blackberries are doing.
2) If the cyclist had decided not to look where she was going but insteaf at the car which was about to hit her, what could she have done differently? Evasive action is almost impossible.
3) It really, really isn't the responsibility of the cyclist to avoid any road user who might try to drive into her.
Justice Juan Merchan of Friday delayed the sentencing to 26 November, citing "the unique time frame this matter currently finds itself in" among his reasons.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ypr3vd7x9o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxl8p115gxo
Something that struck me about the BBC bit about HMP Pentonville, the number of female prison officers, many who were quite small. That doesn't seem optimal in a prison stuff full of the worst and most violent criminals.
I do not know anything of the case being discussed, but at 80 I have been actively driving since I was 17, have not had any traffic offence convictions, fines or even parking tickets but then I do take driving seriously and certainly do not accept any driver can have a lapse of concentration whilst driving, and still expect to keep their licence
Since the new regulations, I always give cyclists a wide berth and are courteous to them as I am with pedestrians
It is true that cyclists exceeding the speed limit seems unfair, and I do think they should have insurance but all road users are entitled to use the road and respect each other
I should say I have an annual eye test and have notified the DVLA of my pacemaker, and I would urge all drivers to be conscious of their legal duty to inform the DVLA if they have sight or notifiable health issues
I like a Hawaiian pizza. By all objective standards it’s a classic marriage of pork and tangy fruit. It just happens to be on a piece of flat bread with cheese.
I’m making Khinkali and khachapuri for the family this evening but of course bastardising the ingredients, with mozzarella mixed with cheddar and Turkish cheese in the Adjaran kachapuri, and MSG in the khinkali.
Today’s non-farm payrolls show a softening of the job market but not so bad that there’s talk of a recession . So for Harris an interest rate cut and inflation pressures easing are a help going into November .
My benchmark for acceptable is what I cook every day without trying very hard. I'm looking for something more refined when I eat out.
“Keir Starmer vows to stop people-smuggling gangs with tactics used to jail rioters
“We sat round the table with law enforcement and the police to make sure that we got the desired outcome and made sure we could deliver – in that case – swift justice.
“I’m absolutely determined to take the same approach here, active government, an operational summit, making sure that we are going to retake control of our borders, take these gangs down,” he said.“
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/06/keir-starmer-vows-to-stop-people-smuggling-gangs-with-tactics-used-to-jail-rioters
AN OPERATIONAL SUMMIT
That should fix it
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-pedal-cyclist-factsheet-2022/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britain-pedal-cycle-factsheet-2022
It's about a factor of 50-100 difference between bad events due to cars and cycles. Mass and velocity will do that.
(And yes, if there's a gap in the law, by all means close it. Just be aware that didn't see it as that much of a priority.)
Please do not worry about Trump, it will be over for him soon
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/06/nadine-dorries-whatsapp-messages-broke-mothers-heart/
(For the avoidance of doubt, I won't be marrying my daughter's best friend. Firstly, I'm happily married already. Secondly, she has higher standards.)
This would mean talking the bends of many country roads at about 10mph, and slowing down to about that speed while passing junctions, so that you could safely stop in case someone else did something dangerous.
In practice no-one does that. Everyone takes it on trust that people won't stop in the middle of the road by a blind bend, or pull out from a side road right in front of you. That's what the cyclist did in that video.
Something similar happened to me, though thankfully at a lower speed. But I found it so hard to go past cars at junctions after that, because of not knowing if they would pull into me without me being able to evade them, that I almost completely stopped cycling on the roads, and only cycled on off-road paths and short bits of road that connected them.
People need to remember that driving is a privilege and not a right. It's a privilege that people should lose if they demonstrate that they are not safe to enjoy that privilege.
I don't see why that driver should be driving again in two years.
That alone will probably fix the whole boats issue. Maybe even the economy. And the weather
See Charlie Alliston in 2017.
https://www.realclearpolling.com/maps/president/2024/no-toss-up/electoral-college
Or the “Fend Them Off At Frinton Fuhrer”
Or
“Intergalactic Edgelord of Lo, The Dinghies Have Stopped Assisted by the Operational Summit Antipope”