Cycling UK Forum

https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/news/somerset-news/shocking-video-shows-moment-car-1773856

This has been picked up by the majority of the papers - but at 81 should he ever get his licence back after this?

I would hope and expect that this person will never get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle again. At age 83, the prospect of having to sit an extended re-test would surely be a sufficient deterrent?

I suppose one would like to see him behind bars. But would it serve any purpose?

I would be interested to know if he had driven at all between the day of the incident and the conviction.

Watching that video for a few times, it is hard to see any great difference between the car's positioning and that of other cars on videos posted where the cyclist is enraged by a close pass.

The driver was only a couple of inches away from "having done nothing wrong". This will not be seen as evidence against squeezing through if it is dismissed as evidence that 81 year olds are too past it to squeeze through any more.

I dont tend to ride on roads like that if I can possibly avoid it as you must choose between riding in a manner which obstructs motorists from overtaking unless there is a break in oncoming cars and that road didnt seem to have many of them, resulting in a very large number of angry motorists or riding in to the left inviting dangerous overtakes.

He was disqualified from driving for two years and must taken an extended re-test.
He was handed a conditional discharge lasting 18 months and was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £20.

I try not to fret about sentencing and without a detailed explanation, you never know what was involved in the calculation. A custodial sentence of any length might have killed him but a conditional discharge seems inadequate to me.

To sum up, he's had the worry of a court case which I don't underestimate and he's probably been prevented from driving lawfully for the rest of his life. The same result might have been achieved by getting a grumpy police inspector to caution him on condition that he surrender his driving licence, all at a saving to the public purse of several thousand pounds.

I wish I hadn't watched that.

661-Pete wrote:I would hope and expect that this person will never get behind the wheel of a motor vehicle again. At age 83, the prospect of having to sit an extended re-test would surely be a sufficient deterrent?

I suppose one would like to see him behind bars. But would it serve any purpose?

No, I don't think prison would serve any purpose to him or anyone, other than perhaps retribution. I don't think his age is particularly relevant either. I'd like to see a similar sentence for anyone convicted like that, whether 81 or 18: long ban (and no special pleading), compulsory retest, big fine and if a new licence is issued it should be preloaded with six points for a probationary period.

thirdcrank wrote:

He was disqualified from driving for two years and must taken an extended re-test.
He was handed a conditional discharge lasting 18 months and was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £20.

I try not to fret about sentencing and without a detailed explanation, you never know what was involved in the calculation. A custodial sentence of any length might have killed him but a conditional discharge seems inadequate to me.

To sum up, he's had the worry of a court case which I don't underestimate and he's probably been prevented from driving lawfully for the rest of his life. The same result might have been achieved by getting a grumpy police inspector to caution him on condition that he surrender his driving licence, all at a saving to the public purse of several thousand pounds.

It is possible that a talking to from an unfriendly cop might have worked
It is also possible that it would not have worked, he could still drive around for years without a licence and almost no chance of being caught

I suppose one would like to see him behind bars. But would it serve any purpose?

One might argue that a prison sentence might dissuade others from taking such risks, but, alas, when people do things like this they don't believe that they are taking risks - they see their behaviour as perfectly reasonable And no doubt a lot of drivers will see this story and rather than thinking: "we ought to get close-passers off the road", they will think "we ought to get old drivers off the road" - the bad drivers always finding an excuse to remove themselves from any identification of wrong doing.

He still might drive without a licence. Whether his licence is taken away by court order or by "voluntary" surrender makes little difference to that. Where it does make a difference is that a voluntarily surrendered licence can be regained at any time without taking a test.

Cyril Haearn wrote:

thirdcrank wrote:

He was disqualified from driving for two years and must taken an extended re-test.
He was handed a conditional discharge lasting 18 months and was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £20.

I try not to fret about sentencing and without a detailed explanation, you never know what was involved in the calculation. A custodial sentence of any length might have killed him but a conditional discharge seems inadequate to me.

To sum up, he's had the worry of a court case which I don't underestimate and he's probably been prevented from driving lawfully for the rest of his life. The same result might have been achieved by getting a grumpy police inspector to caution him on condition that he surrender his driving licence, all at a saving to the public purse of several thousand pounds.

It is possible that a talking to from an unfriendly cop might have worked
It is also possible that it would not have worked, he could still drive around for years without a licence and almost no chance of being caught

If he got to 81 without hitting someone before, he has almost certainly experienced a deterioration in his spatial awareness, due to eyesight or other issues. So he is not going to be able to mend his ways even if he wants to. He was unfit to drive on the day of the collision and he will remain so.

Si wrote:And no doubt a lot of drivers will see this story and rather than thinking: "we ought to get close-passers off the road", they will think "we ought to get old drivers off the road" - the bad drivers always finding an excuse to remove themselves from any identification of wrong doing.

That's optimistic. I suspect a lot of bad drivers will think "we ought to get cyclists off the road".

I'm talking about cost-effectiveness. The cautioning system changes every five minutes and I've made no attempt to keep up but AFAIK, if a conditional caution is administered and the conditions are not kept, then the alleged offender is liable to prosecution for the original offence.

There are disadvantages with cautions, such as people accepting a caution just to get out of the police station, so they need to be treated with care, but the right to free legal representation should go some way to mitigate this. Another potential problem is imaginative/ innovative conditions, but requiring somebody in their eighties who's crashed in these circumstance to surrender their licence seems uncontroversial to me.

I've administered countless formal cautions and I'm by no means unusual in this respect. I'm not so conceited as to believe they all made a big difference but I don't think a wigging from a judge is significantly more effective than a carpeting from a police officer, but the latter costs many thousands of pounds less.

What words did you use to caution them, did you have strict instructions what to say?

pwa wrote:If he got to 81 without hitting someone before, he has almost certainly experienced a deterioration in his spatial awareness, due to eyesight or other issues. So he is not going to be able to mend his ways even if he wants to. He was unfit to drive on the day of the collision and he will remain so.

That, yes.

This story has been featured on the MX5 Owners’ Club pages for some days, and has attracted many comments. (The car involved was a Mazda MX5). Condemnation of the driver has been as universal as it has on here, with comments similar to this group. There is certainly no attempt to offer any excuse for the appalling driving standards of this man.