Blood boiler this one so be prepared.. BBC News - Cyclist killer Gary McCourt sentence 'scandalous' how come if I do 150 along the A272 tomorrow, with no crash or issue or even seeing another road user or pedestrian, I'd be sent down when this killer cnut gets a few community hrs and 5 yr ban
Yeah that is crazy. Should he serve time, maybe, probably, but he should certainly never be allowed to drive again.
It is difficult to comment on the incident without knowing more about the exact circumstances. On the face of it the sentence does sound very lenient. I find the Sheriff's remarks about a lack of helmet disappointing. A helmet makes little difference in the outcome of a collision between a cyclist and a vehicle and should never be considered a contributory factor.
Maybe it is scandalous, maybe not. It is clear that the report wants you to think that it is. The bloke looks like a thug in that pic, but then one of my best mates looks like a thug and is anything but. The 22 year old he killed in 1986 - he was 22 himself when he did it, so what bearing does that have on his driving 27 years later? As for the accident, suppose he'd clipped the wheel of a 25 year old bloke wearing a helmet: would he have just dusted himself off with an expletive? Thing is, you can draw no conclusions about this story, form no opinion. You weren't there, didn't see it, don't know the perpetrator. But the story does its best to make you think otherwise.
Journalism at its worst. The report nowhere says what offence the offender was actually found guilty of. "Gary McCourt, 49, from Edinburgh, was found guilty last month of killing Audrey Fyfe, 75, in August 2011." could mean anything from murder to minor carelessness.
Reporting aside, he was found guilty of causing another's death, on the road, through his lack of care,attention or carelessness. Regardless of circumstances, guilty. Therefore, the might of the law comes crashing down and give him a few community hours and a ban for a few years. wash it however you like, facts are guilty by a court within the laws of the land. How can that be treated less seriously than a speeding offence? That is simply my point.
So are you saying that the court was too lenient with him, or are you saying that the punishment for speeding offences is disproportionately harsh? Two wrongs don't make a right.
The point now under discussion seems to be the following. Should people be punished for technical breaches of rules, regardless of the seriousness or otherwise of the consequences? Or should they be punished for the consequences of their actions, regardless of the seriousness of otherwise of their breach? Laws about speeding, health & safety, etc are focussed entirely on technical breaches regardless of outcomes. Other laws (about "causing death" etc) are focussed on outcomes. It is easy to understand that a moment's inattention could have catastrophic consequences, whilst in another situation the most egregious conduct might have no adverse consequences at all. There is a jurisprudential dilemma here. UK law actually has a rather muddled mixture of the two which is not really consistent - hence anomalous cases often arise.
McCourt was found guilty in 1986 of causing another cyclist's death by reckless driving. He said the collision between McCourt and Mrs Fyfe was caused because he had "momentarily" lost concentration, This guy doesn't seemed to have learned much in the 26 years since he last killed someone on the roads . You would have thought having killed one cyclist he might be paying extra attention whenever he encounters them but apparently not . The 2 years he served for that haven't made him take any more care . The judge's decision to spare him another prison sentence beause he has post traumatic strees and is now depressed as a result of the accident doesn't really make much sense when you think that the woman is dead . Her lack of a helmet being an aggravating factor is a very questionable point as being hit by a ton and a half of car and thrown through the air isn't in the testing for any cycle helmet . And they aren't compulsory .
You're still trying to draw conclusions from information that isn't there. Whilst what you say MAY be so, it also may not be. Where is the bit about her being "thrown into the air"? He may have just clipped her wheel, she fell off an banged her noggin. You don't know. One would hope that the judge and court knows more about this than you do. As for having a moment's inattention in 27 years of driving - who hasn't? Of course, he may have frequent moments of inattention. But we don't know this. He doesn't appear to have been done (but again, as Pete points out, we don't actually know) for reckless driving again. My point is simple: the article draws you to a spurious conclusion and it is designed to do this.
The judge can only sentence someone in accordance with what the law allows him to do. He may or may not agree himself with the sentence, but he is constrained either by the law or by the sentences for similar offences set by his colleagues.
I think you have got to the nub of it. Every driver has moments of inattention. 99.9% of the time there are no consequences. Occasionally the driver is prosecuted for carelessness even though no harm has been done. Occasionally the driver is prosecuted for carelessness after there has been catastrophic harm. Should the punishment in the latter case be the same as the former? Or a bit more severe? Or a lot more severe? Some of the folk posting in this thread think 'a lot more severe' is the right answer, it would appear. May I make another point. In criminal court cases various allegations are made. The prosecution makes allegations about the offence, the defence makes allegations in mitigation, witnesses make allegations in the course of their evidence. Those allegations may or may not be true, may or may not be relevant, and may or may not be believed. Journalists tend to select whichever allegations make a good story, and report them as though they were facts. Pinch of salt time!
... but mainly by the Sentencing Guidelines set by the Sentencing Council, and precedent judgments of the Court of Appeal.
From 8th April .. He said he saw the bike rider "somersault" through the air at the junction between Portobello Road and Craigentinny Avenue in Edinburgh. McCourt claimed that he hadn't committed any criminal offence and that the collision between him and Mrs Fyfe was accidental. However, the jury convicted him of causing death by careless driving. BBC News - Gary McCourt guilty of second death crash in Edinburgh
So does this go for all situations? If you think along those lines,how can any of us believe anything,unless we personally experience it? Journalists may well have a personal axe to grind,but no more than anyone else. They are in a position to display their bias to a wider audience,thats all. And they probably bend their view of something to whatever will sell the most newspapers But they're no different to any other individual. Everybody has a personal axe to grind,inc.bikers/Judges/forum members/traffic wardens etc etc. As an adult,you have to sift through all the nonsense and try to glean the facts out of anything you read/hear/see/is reported/told to you. As I assume no forum member was there? The story as reported could well be true Or it could be untrue Or partially true So it might be excellent journalism Or it might be total rubbish Who knows?
Precisely. All you say is true. We don't know. Of course we are continually making judgements based on the "facts" reported and many of those will be wrong. A good case was the whole Iraqi WMD dossier where we were all woefully mislead and strange inventions were submitted as facts. In this case, there could be a case for outrage, and there might not be. But it seems to me a bit of a short cut to jump straight to outrage on the back of such flimsy "evidence" as is reported in the BBC story. That's all. I'd need more facts than those couple of paragraphs before I thought that a great injustice had been done.
