A sad case.
Victoria McClure was sentended to 18 months' imprisonment for causing death by dangerous driving. She had been adjusting her satnav gizmo and lost her driving concentration, thereby knocking over a cyclist who tragically was killed:
Judge Nicholas Wood, sentencing McClure at Reading Crown Court, said she should have seen the cyclist.
“This case is a tragic loss of life and shows the potential dangers of looking at a satnav while driving, even at an average speed," he said.
‘No sentence I pass will equate or make up for the loss of life – the loss of Mr Hilson’s life. No sentence I pass will put an end to their grief or to your grief or remorse.’
A fuller account of what happened is here. Grim reading.
My fellow Telegraph Blogs writer Mic Wright has no sympathy with the person who caused the crash:
No one who kills with their car as a result of that kind of gross negligence just “makes a mistake”. A speeding motor vehicle is a weapon in reckless hands. It doesn’t matter if that driver is a nice woman who bakes cakes and cares about her community. Fiddling with a satnav as you move down a road at 60mph is inexcusable. It is too easy to say: “But it could happen to any of us”.
There's a common tone to these stories that focuses on the technology and puts the blame on the distraction of screens. There is something in that. Manufacturers of smartphones and GPS devices can work harder to prevent their misuse while driving and ensure drivers focus not on the screen but the road. But someone who makes the choice to get behind the wheel is willingly agreeing to take on a serious responsibility.
As we might have predicted, a neighbor has come to McClure's defence. “No one deserves what she is going through,” he says. He could not be more wrong. Eighteen months in jail is a small price to pay for the life she took and those she has ruined.
Over on Twitter Martin Nash thinks that eating a sandwich in a car is itself unsafe. The usual messy Twitter flurry ensues:
Martin Nash @mknash
@CharlesCrawford Then we need a rethink if a court considers eating a sandwich while driving to be safe.
Charles Crawford @CharlesCrawford
What? Millions of people do that with no problem! Someone momentarily loses concentration? Bad luck
Martin Nash @mknash
@CharlesCrawford Brutal. Lets hope your loved ones are fully kevlar protected at all times
Charles Crawford @CharlesCrawford
Not brutal at all. Sane. Impossible and stupid to try to make driving or anything else 'risk-free'.
Martin Nash @mknash 3h
@CharlesCrawford So there should be no penalties for causing preventable deaths?
Charles Crawford @CharlesCrawford
Not what I said. In any case, 'causing' and 'being legally responsible for' are not the same thing
This last point is the key one. It doesn't matter for this purpose what the law about a driver's responsibilities says in actual words. Someone has to decide whether and if so how those words apply to the case in hand.
The law itself draws careful distinction between 'dangerous' driving and 'careless' driving. See eg this case in fact involving eating a sandwich, where alas another cyclist died but the driver was convicted only of 'careless' driving.
Because the facts can vary so much according to myriad factors (eg eating a sandwich may suddenly become objectively more dangerous if the sun pops out from a cloud and momentarily blinds a driver), the law looks to distinguish levels of responsibility by trying to ascertain how far any given distraction was 'avoidable:
... A distinction has been drawn between ordinary avoidable distractions and those that are more significant because they divert the attention of the driver for longer periods or to a greater extent; in this guideline these are referred to as a gross avoidable distraction. The guideline for causing death by dangerous driving provides for a gross avoidable distraction to place the offense in a higher level of seriousness.
14.
Any avoidable distraction will make an offense more serious but the degree to which an offender’s driving will be impaired will vary. Where the reaction to the distraction is significant, it may be the factor that determines whether the offense is based on dangerous driving or on careless driving; in those circumstances, care must be taken to avoid “double counting”.
15.
Using a hand-held mobile phone when driving is, in itself, an unlawful act; the fact that an offender was avoidably distracted by using a hand-held mobile phone when a causing death by driving offense was committed will always make an offense more serious. Reading or composing text messages over a period of time will be a gross avoidable distraction and is likely to result in an offense of causing death by dangerous driving being in a higher level of seriousness.
16.
Where it is proved that an offender was briefly distracted by reading a text message or adjusting a hands-free set or its controls at the time of the collision, this would be on a par with consulting a map or adjusting a radio or satellite navigation equipment, activities that would be considered an avoidable distraction.
As some distractions are clearly more avoidable (and more distracting) than others, the level of responsibility established will influence the length of sentence passed (if the driver is convicted at all).
The hard fact of it is that driving for any length of time is rather monotonous, yet drivers somehow keep going in a straight line while 'tuning out' and thinking of other things. Anything is capable of being an avoidable 'distraction' deserving punishment but only if it in fact distracts to the point of causing the driver to hit something. Eating a sandwich or turning on the car radio or opening the window or looking back at a collision spotted in the rear-view mirror may all lead to split-second disaster on a busy narrow windy road, but have no consequences at all on a much faster motorway.
It all boils down to our old friend 'striking a balance'. As a society we have proclaimed that 'using a handheld mobile phone while driving' is a criminal offense even if it does no harm to anyone and no accident is caused. However, using a carphone is not an offense. Eating a sandwich while driving is not an offense. Driving a heavy lump of metal at 60 miles an hour on most country roads is not an offense. We accept higher levels of risk and some 'avoidable' deaths as the price we pay for moving about and getting things done rather faster.
To this extent it is a phony silly argument to say in any context that "the law must be tightened - if only one life is saved, that's worth it!". We overwhelmingly reject that argument by not imposing a 10 mph speed-limit on all roads all the time.
To put it another way. Every year UK drivers drive a total something like 250 BILLION miles - to the moon and back 500,000 times. Along the way there must be hundreds of millions of avoidable distractions that in fact cause no harm at all. In an important sense it is pure luck whether any given distraction at whatever level of avoidability leads to a crash. Yes, it's reasonably predictable that getting distracted will cause some accidents. But whether any given distraction causes an accident in a given case is often down to chance. This also applies to diplomacy: why don't clever diplomats spot 'obvious' looming political dramas such as the collapse of communism or the Arab Spring?
In short, I disagree with Mic Wright. I do have sympathy with Victoria Maclure.
One reason why the number of accidents is so small is, of course, that cases like that of Victoria Maclure get prominent coverage. Drivers do respond to threats and incentives; they aim to focus and drive safely, with overwhelming success.
Mrs Maclure did make a terrible mistake to take her eye off the road and adjust that satnav for as long as she did. But it was just awful luck that she then crashed into Anthony Hilson. She took his life and wrecked her own for a short lapse in concentration. As crimes go the level of moral guilt is fairly low, even if the punishment as laid down by law still has to be fairly severe, a fact the law recognised in giving her 'only' 18 months' imprisonment.
But there was no element whatsoever of 'intent': it was basically a ghastly freakishly unlucky accident to which her carelessness directly contributed.
There but for the grace of God ...