judge upholds dangerous driving conviction for close pass

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I like Skol

A Minging Manc...
The driver is clearly an aggressive, stubborn cockwomble with a seriously flawed personality. To continue the argument once the police came knocking shows he is unable to link actions to consequences and this alone should exclude him from ever driving again.
 

Drago

Legendary Member
All he had to do was gaze at his feet, mumble an apology, and appear just a teensy bit contrite. That fact he couldn't shows he has no control over his ego and behaviour and it is quite right that he is no longer allowed in public in command of a large kinetic weapon.

Another one who wouldn't have been on the road in the first place if the driving test included an IQ testing element.
 

hatler

Guru
This is interesting. There doesn't appear to be any video evidence (there's certainly no mention of any).

Therefore it must have come down to the cyclists' word against that of the driver.

How close was the van ? Indeterminate, yet he was found guilty of dangerous driving.

The police even intimate that had he displayed some level of contrition he would have got away with a word of warning, yet the act of passing the cyclists that close was 'dangerous'.

On that basis, any close close pass should result in a prosecution for dangerous driving - the contrition, or otherwise, of the perpetrator has nothing to do with the absoluteness of the crime, which was a close pass and is therefore dangerous driving.

Hmmmmm.
 
OP
OP
tom73

tom73

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
"I will kill you next time" on it's own clearly shows intent. But together with his comments to the police after the event clearly show he was well aware of his actions and what his intent was at the time.
Which in turn left very little possible defence in any case brought against him.
He more or less convicted himself lack of video evidence or not.
 

Pale Rider

Legendary Member
It does rather look as if he talked himself into a prosecution when the police first contacted him.

On the other hand, any admissions in interview could also do that, so too much contrition could also result in a summons.

He pleaded not guilty before the magistrates who clearly thought the case was not serious enough to be sent directly to Crown court.

The magistrates convicted him.

None of us heard the evidence, but the evidence of several honest and straightforward citizens - the cyclists - will have outweighed his evidence.

The conviction was then upheld by the judge, sitting with two magistrates, at the Crown court.
 

icowden

Veteran
Location
Surrey
Nice to see a proactive police involvement and judges willing to pass sentences.
Shame it's NI be a bit too wishful thinking for it make it over to rest of the Uk.
Show what can be done with a bit of willingness to try.
https://road.cc/content/news/267552...holds-dangerous-driving-conviction-close-pass

The law is the same in NI as in the rest of the UK. The comment in the article is about precedent, although even the article concedes that this may not even be considered a binding precedent in NI as these cases tend to be subjective and based on the evidence submitted.

Pleasingly this guy behaved like a d*** in front of multiple witnesses. Although the article doesn't mention video evidence, it doesn't mean that there wasn't any. But in any event the Court seemed happy that with that number of witnesses, there was pretty strong evidence. I think the treatment of "Dangerous" driving is probably less about the actual close passes and more about the "i'll kill you next time" and "there was none of them were lying in the road" along with the testimony of the rather traumatised cyclists which does rather suggest a casual disregard for fellow human lives and that this was a series of very close passes.
 
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