UKH

Why do we punish bad luck?

In our legal system, we harshly punish people who have done something wrong which has had severe but unlucky consequences. 

Whereas people who have committed exactly the same act, but somehow avoided harm get off with a slap on the wrist. 

Here are a couple of examples from two people who have fallen asleep at the wheel. 

A lorry driver,( a supposed professional, who's vehicle has huge potential for harm) , ended up in a field and got a fixed penalty notice. 

Whereas the car driver killed a jogger and got 3.5years in prison. 

https://www.wiltshiretimes.co.uk/news/23619833.m4-traffic-news-lorry-driver...

www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-66740810.amp

I contend that one of these cases had fatal consequences due to sheer bad luck, and they should be punished equally (or more for the lorry driver).

We have the same situation with cases involving drunken fights, where the result could be an assault charge or a murder charge depending on whether the victim hits his head on a curbstone as he falls.

I think the law should punish crimes for their obviously foreseeable potential consequences. We should not let people off just because they miraculously caused no harm. And we should not give overly harsh punishments for people whose actions caused severe harm just by bad luck.

What are your thoughts on this?

Largely agree. I've long found it absurd/unjust how heavily weighted the consequences of like offences are (falling asleep at the wheel being a prime example). From talking to others over the years I've got the impression I'm in a bit of a minority on that. The idea of punishment for consequences seems pretty popular and people do make coherent arguments for it, usually from the victim's perspective or their family's but also for simplicity and consistency (from a particular perspective). I think we instinctively simplify and pick sides, it seems pretty hard wired, so we struggle to see and believe that sometimes the perpetrator is also a victim, either of their circumstance or of pure bad luck.

I suspect it comes down to a couple of things, our quite variable from individual to individual capacity for empathy and what exactly we each think the justice system exists to achieve, assuming we've ever given that any real thought, what justice even means. Most of us can find plenty of common ground on that but there is a lot of variety at the edges!

jk

The nature of the crime is only one determining factor when considering length of sentence and the consequences are taken into account. 

What you say makes a lot of sense, however having a justice system that has functioned as well as it has done, for so long is something of a miracle.  The exercise of discretion over sentencing for similar crimes based on a multitude of factors seems to work ok in practice and balances the philosophical justifications for punishment (including retribution and the requirement for the victims to feel a level of fairness in the outcome)

I agree. Black ice*, poor visibility is visible, sun in eyes, blind corner, people crossing the road etc are all obviously foreseeable risks if you pay attention to conditions and other road users. Obviously foreseeable things that happen regularly should never be mitigation (unless you respond to conditions and still something goes wrong).

*obviously foreseeable risk if you see frost and have a temperature warning on dashboard

Because by punishing obviously foreseeable potential consequences the prisons would be full and voters wouldn't like it.

I doubt the two offences as charged would be comparable and that as a starting point gives the disparity in sentences. The lorry driver would have probably got charged with Dangerous Driving which as far as I am aware is the standard for any accident where falling asleep occurs (without more serious consequence), when sentencing the judge has guidelines with aggravating and mitigating factors which will include consequences, early guilty plea etc.

The car driver who killed someone will be charged with Causing Death by Dangerous Driving for example so the starting offence and sentencing guideline is already much higher. Again the judge has leeway for aggravating and mitigating factors that change the outcome.

If we go the way as you suggest in your final paragraph I think you would end up in a very polarised system of some too lenient sentences but more often the sentences would fall as too harsh a sentence for equivalent charged offences because more serious consequences of unlawful behaviour could easily be foreseeable, especially in relation to poor driving. 

Real disparity in the criminal justice system is not between good and bad luck I don't think, its whether you are poor or rich the zealous prosecution of protesters versus the blind eye to millions in fraud and misconduct.

"Obviously foreseeable" sounds like one of those ultimately subjective phrases politicians love to write into law, with the ensuing legal battles over what it means being well and truly someone else's problem.

To apply it to the OP's cases, which is more obviously foreseeable when you come off the road, ending up in a field or killing a jogger? Judging by the amount of cars in fields around here and the dearth of dead joggers, it sounds like your law would let the driver who killed the jogger off pretty lightly. If you remove the outcome from the weighting of the sentencing, then in almost all cases the sentence will necessarily be at odds with what the public feel is a just punishment in relation to the outcomes. That appears to be important to people and if you run that experiment a few thousand times, with the public feeling many sentences are either too harsh or too lenient, then civil society will break down very quickly. 

The victim impact is also a significant part of sentencing. A parent whose child has just been killed will have a different view to a farmer looking at a broke fence. Whether you believe victim impact should apply or not might be at the crux of your quandary.

I would imagine the biggest drawback in all this would be any relatives/friends of any victims and the inevitable furore if the person who killed/injured their little darling got away with anything less than a summary death sentence.

It appears that anyone who dies in such a manner is always just one step away from being sanctified by the Pope judging by the plaudits heaped upon them afterwards. That doesn't seem to alter whether they really are a credit to their family and society as a whole that got knocked down on the pavement, or have been a vicious gun-carrying drug dealer for the last 10 years who was physically attacking the person who killed/injured them.

I think the OP is arguing that the crime is the same (driving tired), the consequences were different, and so the punishment should be more similar.

It does question the meaning of inevitability. There are crimes that include the intent of potential for future harm (drink driving, possession of a weapon, possession of drugs with intent to supply).

One side effect of punishing the potential of the crime, not the outcome, would be that you either reduce the sentence for murder or you end up with every one who ever got in a bar fight locked up for 20 years. Is it that the system we have is the least worst and satisfies society's need to punish those who kill.

There is some literature in the philosophical field of Ethics on this topic if that interests you "Moral Luck" is the key word to search for. example https://web.archive.org/web/20141014002930/http://rintintin.colorado.edu/~v...

Perhaps change the type of sentences that are available.

I thought the idea of weekend jails was a good one. If someone is jailed, they may lose their job, their house, their family suffers, the state needs to pick up the pieces at extra cost.

With a scheme where someone gets 6 months, but can do the time using weekends, holidays etc, they keep their jobs and family. The state gets to educate them and impose restrictions, such as being drug and alcohol free. They are in the system for longer, but it gives a chance for support and rehabilitation to have an impact.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/jan/25/ukcrime.prisonsandprobatio...

Obviously not a cure for all problems, but another option.

Philosophically I agree with you. But it would get pretty complicated knowing where to draw the line. You could extend your argument further in the specific example you've given. The root cause in both cases was driving tired and your two drivers who actually fell asleep at the wheel were both the unlucky ones compared to all the drivers who drove while equally tired and just about kept their eyes open. Should we find a way to quantify tiredness and send the police out to catch them?

So what are you proposing? Everyone gets a sentence in the middle?

The first case seems oddly light response from the cops.

The balancing line between justice and vengeance

I agree, and have had similar thoughts in the past.

I remember raising this with a colleague who strongly disagreed that the punishment should be input based, rather than output based. I then wrongly assumed that most people were happy with the current luck based sentencing, but this thread suggests otherwise. Interesting.

The example I think I raised was the Selsby accident where a car landed on tracks and derailed a train. Think the driver got 5 years and 10 people died.

I've found myself really struggling to get to the next junction on a motorway when tiredness has suddenly hit me unexpectedly. It's so hard to fight when it catches you out. I didn't fall asleep, but I could have, should I get 5 years?

We don't; we punish outcomes.

T.

I think the most egregious example was where a person towing a trailer came off the motorway and ended up on a railway, causing a train crash and deaths. I thought it was the fault of highway and rail engineering not to provide protection against a fairly foreseeable scenario; that vehicle could have come off the road for any number of reasons for which the driver would have been blameless, but they were blamed because they had fallen asleep due to driving whilst tired.

So yes, we punish the consequences, not just the criminal action. I'm sure I remember a similar discussion where someone claimed the law didn't do that, but the charges of CDBDD or CDBCD show that we do consider consequences. I'd be in favour of more stringent sentences for DD...

Selby; that's the one I was thinking of.

No, but I hope you got forty winks instead.

Another example is the one punch death - loads of people have dust ups all the time - but in a few cases the recipient of a punch has fallen and hit their head on a kerb and died. Surely there was no intent there- but it still leads to manslaughter. Whereas in the other 999999 cases out of 100000 it is all sorts ranging from nothing - to a split lip. 

Viewer discretion advised. 

youtube.com/watch?v=TYiJ0ogp_Ik&

What would be the point and would it be effective?

jk

I think a problem with this in general is that very minor offences can occasionally have huge consequences.  Do you send loads of "lucky" people to prison for ages despite there being no effect, or let off those few who were "unlucky" because someone died.

On the other hand, google "egg-shell skull"

If the punishment was to take dangerous drivers off the road (removing licence, with strict punishment for violation), then, yes, I think it would be effective.

Why does attempted murder carry a lesser sentence than murder?

Intent, action, and result are all taken into account and the punishment reflects that. Should it? I don't know.

It's certainly an imperfect system but a large part of law is for sentencing to reflect the wrong-doing not the wrong-could've-done. The problem with punishing what potentially could have happened as equally as what did happen is that we leave it open to an almost minority report situation developing, or the prosecution dreaming up the most wildly (and possibly unlikely) worst possible case scenarios.

I think it is a lesser evil for sentencing to in large part reflect what happened than a supposition of what could've.

Also, if the shoe was on the other foot, would you feel it's fair to be sentenced for a gravity of event that never was?

I feel like the point that others have made is fair - victims or their families want to see serious consequences for the people who have done something so terrible to their lives, and it'll be hard to get away from that entirely, whether or not you think it's entirely philosophically justified.

On the other hand, there is a reasonable argument that we're too focused on stringent punishments in the cases where a combination of factors leads to a tragedy, and not to regularly applying milder corrective punishments to people who are doing something dangerous but getting away with it. For instance, someone who speeds is probably not going to stop speeding because they hear that a speeding driver killed a child and got a stiff prison sentence - as far as I can tell, that sort of thing just gets subconsciously filed away under "things that happen to other people" for a lot of people. They're much more likely to stop speeding if every other time they speed they get caught by a speed camera and get a fine and three points on their license.

Obviously this is hard to do - even for easy to detect things like speeding or tailgating it'd take a lot more police or a lot more cameras, and it'd doubtless lead to howls of protest from people who think that speeding is only bad when it's someone else doing it, but I think it's an important way of looking at things, and we are seeing steps towards it with more use of things like dashcam footage.

At one point there was a move to apply differing fines to fixed fine motoring offences dependent on the income of the miscreants. i.e. Those who were well off being given a fine that would actually hurt them (and hopefully re-educate them) rather than it being completely inconsequential to someone with their income, and the poorer possibly getting a lesser fine but one that would still "sting".

Guess who came out against it ? - the well off middle classes with their "influence" on the political class. All of a sudden they insisted that fines and so forth had to be equal to be "fair" - or at least their version of fair.

Or in other words they wanted to be able to (effectively) get away with it. After all, as far as they were concerned, they were the "right" sort of people, and were above that sort of thing, whereas those with less money were the dregs, and shouldn't be allowed on the road in the first place, as such a privilege (or right as they would see it) was too good for such people.

I look forward to all the dislikes from you well off people whose parents (or even themselves) were the ones that campaigned against such a measure.

Consider this, have you ever been driving and for whatever reason momentarily taken your eye off the road or lost concentration? It happens to thousands of people every day and in 99%+ of cases, nothing happens. Very occasionally someone gets killed. We can't really monitor it but supposing we could? Should everyone be getting prison time as soon as their gaze moves from the road?

Hand yourself in now !

I know someone who fell asleep at the wheel (after a nightshift) hit a tree, and ended up in a coma.

Should they also get 3.5 years inside, considering no harm was done to anyone else (or are the life limiting injuries they received considered punishment enough)?

Surely, any legal system has to take account of the actual (as well as potential) harm done, otherwise its a bit of a farce?

Thanks all, some really interesting points raised.

Should we judge the morality of peoples actions based on their intentions, or the outcome?

I think the key to this, philosophically, is the word "culpability" applied to the behaviour which causes the harm.  Personally I think a fair justice system would punish equal culpability equally.

Arriving at the degree of culpability, of course, must vary from case to case.  Forseeability varies from circumstance to circumstance and greatly with the degree of experience of the culprit as to what is forseeable.

In a somewhat similar vein, but perhaps a little more practical to apply, I've always thought that civil penalties should have some decoupling between the money taken from the offending party and the money going to the party who sued.

At the moment, someone could suffer life-changing injuries and get only a minimal amount of compensation because the person they were able to sue couldn't afford much and didn't have much/any relevant insurance cover.

A company could be mildly negligent but get unlucky and cause serious harm. Either the person harmed doesn't get much money because the company didn't do much wrong, or the company gets a penalty disproportionate to their negligence (I'm not sure which of these two applies, or whether it varies).

Another company could be wildly reckless but get lucky and only cause minor harm, presumably costing them very little.

A particularly large company could pay out a big compensation bill to an individual but shrug it off as a cost of doing business because it's trivial compared to their other outgoings while a small company could be crippled by a similar incident.

If there was a common pool of compensation money, penalties could be applied in proportion to the severity of the misdeeds and the resources of the company or individual, with compensation handed out in proportion to the severity of the injuries. There'd still be a requirement to make sure the overall balance of payments in and out of the pool is correct but no need for a perfect match in each individual case.

Discourage people from following through with a second attempt if their first attempt fails.

Attempted Murder carries a maximum sentence of Life Imprisonment.

I agree whole-heartedly. A member of my family unfortunately went through this very situation. Found guilty of dangerous driving causing death which was a complete accident through a 10 second lapse in concentration. Pleaded not guilty to dangerous driving as wanted to plead guilty to careless driving. The not guilty plea meant the judge gave her 2.5 years in prison where I've seen similar cases get away with suspended sentences for being drunk at the wheel with the same sad ending. Worst of all, the parents of the deceased didn't want my family member behind bars, but that wasn't read out in court, although I don't know if it would have made a difference. They're out now, but it'll be years until their young kids and partner will get over the separation trauma. You soon realise that the sentence punishes the family just as much as the person.

Is that meant to be a '10 second lapse in concentration'?

I wonder if in situations like the one you describe a significant period of community service would be a better punishment. And perhaps a permanent driving ban. Or/and maybe an alimony type payment that's proportional to earnings to try and support the victims family. Wether the family would want a constant reminder may be another matter.

Prisons are better suited for keeping evil off the streets with a hope of rehabilitation. Neither of which apply in the case you describe.

Oh absolutely. They would have quite happily done community service for the rest of their days rather than being taken away from their family. The punishment certainly wasn't going to do anything for their rehabilitation, and they (at this stage) never want to get behind a wheel again anyway. 

A distant relative of mine was in that position and decided to pause on the hard shoulder (for emergency use only) so that the passenger could take over the driving. The police prosecuted him for an offence. 
There are many stretches of motorway with considerable distances between exits or services.

On a slightly different tack - many of us will have responded to terrible events of this type with the thought “there but for the grace of god go I”, which does get one thinking about the OP’s question.

I think I would claim that I was having an ocular migraine (whether I was or not), that it was coming on too quickly to reach the next junction and that it wasn't safe to continue; options 1. wait 20-30 minutes till it goes and carry on then, 2. passenger take over driving straight away.

Having an ocular migraine would be far more likely for me than being so tired as to risk falling asleep.

Obviously anyone could claim this since it's not verifiable, but you'd need to think quickly and not be concerned about lying (if it was).

Consequentialism versus deontology? These forums keep doing accidental philosophy and I worry that it might lead to discrimination against Pyrrhonists.

Having worked a 24 hour shift I got home and had been in bed for 15 minutes before the on call phone went. As I have a legal obligation to attend, back into the car for the 15 minute drive to the hospital. This was 0500 and the sun just coming up in a large northern city. At some point I fell asleep and, mercifully, the car drifted to a halt on the road after hitting the kerb. No damage to me, minor car damage. I continued my journey and professional obligations.

Aside from the consequences if I'd not attended I frequently wonder what might have happened if I'd hit a car, house or person. (Quite an interesting dilemma that I should have refused to drive the car but couldn't refuse to operate, but that's a different debate).

I know quite a few doctors (and vets) who have fallen asleep at the wheel and who were lucky. One chap spun off the M8 in Glasgow after a similarly long shift and the police didn't press charges given the circumstances. But had he hit someone would no doubt be in prison (although this might have been before 1988 when the Death by DD law came in).

I do wonder why courts seem so reluctant to give life bans from driving. Plenty of examples in the press of people not just negligently driving, but deliberately driving like maniacs who get driving bans of a year or two. 

That's crazy rostering. I hope that is a thing of the past.

That sort of thing would absolutely not be permitted for e.g. train drivers or airline flight deck crew.  Could the hospital not at least have organised a taxi for you, rather than you having to drive?  The common rescue services adage of not allowing yourself to become a casualty comes to mind.

And by the way, I completely get that your ability or otherwise to attend was potentially a deciding factor in someone's survival, and you have my complete sympathy for being put in situations like that.  But it does raise serious questions about the way the hospital - and by extension, the NHS organisation responsible for the area, and ultimately the government - expect things to be done.

I often ponder why it is that we have a different offence for killing some with a car vs most other ways in which you can accidentally/recklessly cause someone to die.  Looping all the way back to the OP, might things not appear more just (depending on your preferred value of 'just') if such incidents were prosecuted as two offences; dangerous driving, and manslaughter.  (I believe that in cases where a vehicle is used for a deliberate assault leading to death then the charge is simply murder, they don't bother with DD.)  If nothing else, having the DD and the causing death as separate charges might see rather fewer of those cases where a driver gets a lenient sentence because the jury don't regard the driving itself as having been dangerous - the fallacious "That could have been me" mitigation.)

I was once a passenger in a car on the M5 when the driver had to pull over and stop for a pee because the need to do so was starting to affect his driving and the next service station or turnoff was miles away.

As he was relieving himself a Police Car came along and stopped to see what was happening. The Officer accepted it to be a reasonable reason to stop on the hard shoulder, and just made sure that when we re-joined the main carriageway we did so carefully and safely.

I've not got much to add to the thread but figured I'd reply to your rostering comment. 

For my first two years working for an ambulance trust in a station classed as remote and rural we still had on call elements to our roster in 2020/1 

We used to operate two A&E vehicles with two day shifts and two nights. 0700-1900 and 0800-2000 with their nighttime counterparts working the same timings. Our local working policy is that the 7's are the first call vehicle and will attend all jobs unless unable to do so eg. already tasked or on a break (not including certain grades of call). The second call vehicle will only work if the first is tied up. With the exception of long distance transfer after 1400 or 0200, we do a looooot of transfers, roughly 6 hours a piece and that's if you don't get tasked after dropping your patient at hospital.

The second call vehicle would book on at 0800 on a Friday and work until 0800 on Monday. 12 hours from station and 12 hours from home. If you didn't use the fatigue policy to request time off the vehicle they could/would run you in to the ground. I maintain that by a country mile the most dangerous aspect of my job is driving. 

I think it's mad that there isn't more stringent legislation around the driving time of emergency vehicles. If I was driving a truck and my taco showed what I"m regurlaly tasked to do I'd be prosecuted. 

It's not just the driving; it's doing a life-critical job whilst exhausted. As you say, it's mad, and a disgrace, and, as pointed out, would be illegal in other jobs (that are merely driving jobs).

The car didn't go directly from the motorway onto the railway but crossed someone else's land on the way.  Presumably the fences were only expected to have to be cattleproof.

There is also the issue of older drivers, and whether they are still capable of controlling their vehicle. There is no supervision and if they don't decide to stop, they carry on driving until something bad happens. At that point, the law usually takes away their licence and gives them a suspended sentence, even if they've killed or seriously injured someone. While I broadly agree with this approach once it has happened, surely prevention would be better?

Both older drivers and their relatives are often keen to allow them to keep their driving independence for as long as possible. If a concerned person decides to ring the police or the local surgery, the driver in question is summoned to an interview with their doctor, who usually does a cCOG test, and if they pass has no reason to prevent them from driving.

There is no requirement to take any kind of driving test. Why not?

The motorway and railway crossed at right angles. The risk of a vehicle leaving the motorway and ending up on the railway was fairly obvious. The Land Rover & trailer didn't have far to travel to reach the railway. The side of the motorway should have been protected against this. I hope that lesson has been learned.

From the wiki entry:

"The vehicle travelled 30 yards (27 m) down an embankment and onto the southbound railway track"

Recently had an issue with my Dad where he had memory problems. He wrote to the DVLA as required and saw his doctor. The possible outcomes were

1) The doctor could say he was OK to drive and the DVLA accepted it. 
2) He could go for a test at a DVLA approved centre which would include an office based and car based test. A decision would be made on his fitness to drive by the tester, and if he was deemed unsafe he wiuld not be able to drive home. 
3) The doctor could say he was unfit to drive and the DVLA could agree. He would not be allowed to drive, but would have the right to appeal to court. 
 

After several months it came out as number three, and he no longer drives. In my case that was a good thing as we were getting to the stage where I didn’t want to get in the car when Dad was driving. 

It's not just older drivers who are unsafe.

When I passed my motorcycle test I didn't need glasses at all, but when I passed my car test 3 or 4 years later I did - I was most certainly nowhere near elderly at the time. My (paper) licence then acquired an extra letter at the end to indicate the requirement to wear glasses !

There really ought to be a requirement for an eyesight test every 2 or 3 years for EVERYBODY who has a Driving Licence, as the need for glasses doesn't suddenly appear when you reach 70, but creeps up gradually at all ages. Not only that, but whenever an "incident" occurs, I doubt whether the Police record whether any of those involved were actually wearing their glasses, and then check up on the requirement of anyone involved to have been wearing glasses in order to drive. There have even been cases of people who are registered blind being involved in car crashes.

Please note - I personally have prescription safety glasses to ride a motorcycle, in order that my eyes are not vulnerable when the visor is lifted, as well as an ordinary pair for the car.

Which is why they had assessed the risk and put barriers in place which were longer than standard.

Sadly not long enough for a fairly heavy vehicle drifting off the road rather than losing control completely.

Well done your dad for doing the sensible thing. Both mine hung onto their cars for dear life. Mum got shopped to the doctor by a neighbour, and the doctor said she couldn't drive; she never forgave the doctor! Dad had been driving 0000s of miles a year all his life, and we didn't spot that his physical deterioration latterly could be a problem; he had an accident and someone was hurt

Really it would have been ideal if both had been spotted by some non-voluntary system, not the NHS, maybe part of the commercial enterprise that does the speed awareness courses. Should be pay for, possibly every 3 years after 75 or something.

I largely disagree. The way I see it, the criminal act that took place should be punished, not the criminal act that could have happened. I think it's right that a more severe outcome has a more severe punishment, for example attempted murder and murder.

Agree I think - though there are many examples that punish the risk of harm, even if no harm was caused, eg. The common law offence in Scotland of reckless and culpable conduct (admittedly a niche one!).

ultimately though if we prosecute people solely on intent and not outcome, the counter should be true and I should be commended for all the good things I intend to do but rarely get round to.  

it is possible to be found guilty of murder without specific intent.

it is not possible to be found guilty of murder without a specific intent and actions furthering that intent.

which one do you punish the mostest.  which one is most culpablest.

In the case of 2 men who go out to crash planes deliberately is one less bad if he happens to kill only himself?

or two men who manage to crash planes with the intent of causing mass casualties.  One chooses a building that unknown to him is closed for maintenance.

My Grandpa latterly only had partial sight in one eye, and none in the other. He nearly stopped talking to everyone in the family as we all said he was no longer fit to drive. He had a catalogue of near misses, including hitting the wrong pedal in a busy, country park, car park. Thankfully, he accelerated into the bushes and not into a child, but it easily could have been very bad. 

Eventually, my uncle did something to disable the car and said he was waiting for a part to fix it, and then a little while later my Grandpa got more ill anyway and never tried to drive again as he was mostly in hospital and then died. 

He got away with it by pure luck. The doc signed him off to keep driving as my Grandpa told him he was fine! We were really annoyed with the doctor for that. 

It's not like he would have been house bound without his car anyway, he had more than enough money for as many taxis as he could possibly want. He could have hired limos to go everywhere and still would have been fine! But it's a pride thing. 

I think there should be compulsory retesting. Even at younger ages, why wait until your 70s. Every 5 or 10 years throughout life would be sensible. A shorter test than your original one maybe, but something to check you still follow basic good driving habits. 

Fortunately Mum's car mostly had a flat battery and she would get someone to fix it. We rang her garage and told them to play dumb - they understood! Her GP was brave. 

I reckon something like Grand Theft Auto would be good enough for a test, possibly with a few modifications

The test unit would have to have a proper seat, steering wheel and pedals. Set a reasonably low bar for the test itself, fail means you have to retake the standard driving test, and a near fail causes an automatic notification letter to the GP.

Unfortunately the RAC says there are about 6 million drivers over 70 in the UK. That's quite a lot of tests.

We thought my dad should stop driving (he was into his 90s and getting the first signs of dementia), he disagreed, so we told him that we were going to report him to the DVLA and let them "decide". Actually he was ok with that, took the DVLA test (which is much more comprehensive of driving situations than the "normal" driving test), failed and had to surrender his licence.

I think anyone can report anybody to the DVLA - can't remember the process or what you had to assert or disclose but it wasn't onerous. Definitely the route I'd recommend for this kind of disagreement.

Ultimately the legal system and sentencing can only work with a broad consensus from the population.  Therefore I think there will always be an element of 'revenge' built into the punishments - its what the baying mob demand.

Thankfully, after my Dad was diagnosed with Parkinsons he voluntarily surrendered his licence. I wouldn't have wanted to try and persuade him if he hadn't!

Mum still drives, she needs a parking space the size of a bus but otherwise is still safe (only drove a total of 500miles last year). When it comes to her needing to surrender too I don't know what will happen, unless by that stage myself or my brother have moved back home as carers.

I think 'baying mob' is overly scathing. I can't think of many people who'd just shrug and say 'fair enough' when told their dead family was legally worth as little as a broken fence post when it came to sentencing.

There certainly are occasions when "baying mob" is the right description.

What about when those scrotes who were illegally riding an electric motorcycle - two-up, no helmets as well - somewhere in the Swansea (?) area. A Police van had long stopped following - NOT chasing - them, and they rode straight into a parked car. The "baying mob" wanted the Police Officer(s) done for all kinds of things.

But the reality is that firstly it was only a miracle that the scrotes didn't kill some innocent pedestrian (child maybe ?). Secondly there WASN'T a "chase" going on, and thirdly the "baying mob" was made up of yet more scrotes who then proceeded to indulge in an orgy of criminal damge/theft.

Then you get the family members who dwell on the death of a family member to such a point that they become mentally deranged. Enough divorces have come about where one party couldn't stand the eulogising and worshipping of a (sometimes literal) shrine to a death that their other half dwelt on. In such cases it doesn't even matter to the family member whether or not the driver was even remotely to blame - all they want is for someone to pay, and that means, in their eyes, either jail for life or a death sentence. On occasion they have been known to try and carry out the latter, however wrong or inaccurate their belief.

(And this is from someone who, for some period at least, wanted to string up the bas**** who cut up traffic and caused me to break my leg and tear 3 tendons off my shoulder in a m/cycle "incident").