UKH

Anne Sacoolas is the wife of an American envoy who drove out of Croughton air base and set off on the wrong side of the road, with the consequence now in the news. Regardless of whether or not she should have fled the country and whether the US govt should allow her extradition, I find myself wondering about how such a case should be dealt with by the law. I'm sure many of us have driven out of a French petrol station and, in the absence of other traffic, set off on the wrong side of the road. I certainly have. Does that constitute dangerous driving or DWDC&A? The poor woman made a genuine mistake, assuming she wasn't driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or texting while driving, and will have to live with the consequences for the rest of her life. Is anything gained by a custodial sentence in such a case?

And the family of the deceased will have to live with the consequences for the rest of their lives as well. After the deceased did nothing wrong.

And, have you really driven on the wrong side of the road whilst abroad - scary!

Yes I did it on returning to France after a weekend at home. I think the Police would like to know exactly how the lad was killed, meaning was she driving on the wrong side or was she texting?  My brother who lives in Michigan flatly refuses to cycle on the road because he says there is a high likelihood of being killed by a texting driver in an SUV.  If the woman had been driving for weeks or months in Britain the second scenario looks increasingly likely. 

There are times when we should all step up and answer for our actions, and the family of the deceased may know the truth.  If the driver in question has mitigating circs, then there will be an opportunity to raise those.  If (as others have posted) she might have been doing something like texting, and killed someone, then she should face the consequences.

I don't know what crime she'd be charged with but it would be the same crime you or I would be charged with. 

I expect the sentence would be harsher for you or I though as we'd have no mitigation.

I’ve done the same, picked a hire car up, set off on the wrong side of the road...big lorry coming towards me put me right.

and yes it is scary!

I did this in Spain on a deserted desert road. The students i was with let it run for a while before one of them tapped me on the shoulder and pointed out my error. Laughs all round and a round in the bar that night, but I occasionally have nightmares......

Have you never made a mistake?

jk

The parents said in a press conference that there was CCTV of her driving several hundred yards on the wrong side of the road. It seems against the odds she was texting as well, though no doubt the police would check.

Anyway, predictably wandering from the OP’s point. A prison sentence in such circumstances is totally absurd, in my view.

jcm

Obviously incidents like this must always be investigated. it must be established, if possible, why she was driving on the wrong side. You're right, IMHO a custodial sentence may not be appropriate. If the victim's family still wish to speak to her they should be  able to do so. Several times my father had an episode of using the wrong side in France, and he also did the same returning to UK after a holiday. 

She should not have fled the country especially if she had no immunity and that would not help her case.  She should be treated the same as any UK citizen (taking into account any extenuating circumstances such as unfamiliarity with UK roads). However realistically the best outcome may be that UK police go to USA and interview her. Perhaps she could be guaranteed immunity from prosecution if she returns for an inquest.

I've committed countless motoring offenses, either by design or mistake.
However, I've never killed anyone when doing so.
This has go be 'Death by careless driving' at least?

In many cultures, blood money is a response to such a difficult issue. A sum of money is paid to the victim's family. This happens to some extent in Japanese, Korean and Arabic countries.

It has not been seen to be acceptable in Judaism nor Christanity. 

It may, in some people's view, be the least worst option in terrible circumstances. 

Really? A custodial sentence has to be justified by the courts, but being accountable and suffering the penalties of failure to follow the rules of the road is kind of important is it not? 

Chancer: "Ooops sorry officer, I pulled out of a junction forgetting to look for oncoming motorcyclists... my mistake".

Policeman: "Oh that's ok then"

Luckily. Had you been less lucky, would you be more culpable?

Seems unlikely, as texting wouldn't probably lead someone to be driving on the wrong side for long. But someone texting while driving should be much more culpable than someone who temporarily forgets they are in a strange country. You can't say I was texting because I forgot I was driving.

I drove on the wring side of the road once myself. Reading this thread which has probably had a few dozen views so far it seems like a very common mistake to make. Thankfully, for most of us the consequences are not tragic.

If the court finds that the death was the result of a simple error I would hope the claimant is not punished as there would be nothing gained from punishment.

Surely the legal system should be about justice and not revenge.

Is there anything lost by allowing someone to exist outside the law we hold ourselves and each other to?

Happened to me once in about 15,000 miles of LHD motoring in LHD countries and I try to very consciously monitor this when abroad.  Turning off a motorway where we’re all on the same side to a bidirectional local road.  Caught it in a few seconds and would like to think if I hadn’t I would have been sharp enough to avoid a head on.  Thank the gods I didn’t have to find out.

LHD drivers are far less likely to have experience of driving on the wrong side of the road as well.

I would like to know which side of the road the airbase drives on.  My local USAF base in Essex in the 90s was full of imported LHD vehicles being driven on the right - super confusing for the few that ever ventured off base...  

Oddly I find it easier to naturally adapt to driving in the right in my own car as everything else is such a monumental pain in the arse that you don’t fall into the danger zone of not thinking very consciously about driving.  Also I’m not distracted by my sheer annoyance at driving something with a torque converter slushomatic transmisison...

You seem to assume she would be thrown in jail. If it were a simple mistake I doubt she would be.

I did not say that and you are wrong to assume it.  You are reading far more in to my post than I say.

What is the cost to society and to due process if we allow one person to be treated totally differently to any other?  

What is the cost to those close to the victim by being dragged through a public theatre at such a difficult time, and by being denied the due process they have every right and expectation to receive?

I make no comment and venture no view on a custodial sentence.

Fair enough, you seemed to be rebutting a remark that a custodial sentence would be pointless but I must have misinterpreted.

What has she done so right that she deserves immunity? She should take responsibility for her actions like anyone else. I guarantee she'll be less likely to be haunted till the day she dies if she faces up to what she has done. 

Straw poll - raise hands - I have 

I don't think I suggested she did deserve immunity. I just can't get out of my mind "There but for the grace of God (or whoever) go I". I'm interested in the degree of culpability. It seems to me vanishingly unlikely that she did this deliberately. Neither was she taking a risk (as far as we know), like overtaking on a blind bend, or texting or whatever. She, so it seems, until proved otherwise, just forgot she was in a foreign country where they have this strange idea of driving on the left. Personally, I have equal sympathy both for the family of the victim and for Mrs Sacoolas. 

Absolutely agree with all this.

The poor woman? What about the poor mother of the victim? Sorry if this sounds a bit blunt, but why does the fact that you have made the same "genuine mistake" exonerate Anne Sacoolas - or you? How can such negligence be regarded as anything other than dangerous driving? The only difference between the two cases is that you were lucky. Suppose a motorcyclist had been coming the other way in your case, and been killed by you? Would you have protested that there's no point in your facing court proceedings? Whether or not a custodial sentence is served in the case of Anne Sacoolas is for the judge to decide in the light of all the relevant facts. No one should be exempt from due legal process in such a case.

My neighbour's sister-in-law was killed in a head-on collision with an articulated lorry driving on the wrong side of the A6 near Shap. I dread to think what that woman's last thoughts were as she perceived the inevitability of her fate. Two young children lost their mother.

"Genuine mistake"? When the possible consequences of such a mistake are as dire as that, it should surely be one's first priority to avoid making it, whatever else you may be tempted to think about? 

I don't think anyone is suggesting she is not subject to a trial.

On the other hand she did deliberately flee the justice system.  There endeth my sympathy for her.

She did, or her government made her?

My guess is she's a spook and probably either got told to get out the country immediately or it is standard procedure.  Her showing up in an ante-room at the White House makes it more likely she was following orders and is under the protection of the US government. 

There's reasons for giving spooks diplomatic immunity but if they invoke it in a case like this they should also apologise and pay significant compensation.

I can't help wondering whether being the wife of an American envoy isn't the kind of status which would help a spook to fade into the background? 

If I was a spook, I think I'd probably want no traceable connections to anybody else in an official diplomatic capacity, to be more able to go 'Don't look at me' and sidle past (as it were). 

Edit: Perhaps I just have a character streak which means I can like to sidle past unobserved.

As I anticipated several people replying to this thread clearly haven't taken into account, or are choosing to ignore one sentence in my OP, viz. Regardless of whether or not she should have fled the country and whether the US govt should allow her extradition..." 

Also, as anticipated, several people are implying that I don't care about the family of the deceased. It is all too easy to imagine their hideous grief at losing their son in this fashion. It's also easy to condemn the unfortunate driver, which is why I made it clear I have made the same error, but without the same disastrous consequences. As I anticipated I am not alone in this respect. Human beings are prone to error, and those who think they could never make such a mistake are deluding themselves.

If memory serves, criminal sentences are traditionally expected to meet one or more of three tests:

1. Fair punishment? 

2. Deterring others from the same offence?

3. Reforming the criminal tendencies of the offender?

It's hard for me, at least, to square a jail sentence in such a case as this, with any of these three tests.

What about the matter of setting a precedent, potentially giving others the green light to flee the UK to attempt to escape justice?

I think you are stretching the meaning of the word careless.

Analogy is a notoriously unsafe basis for argument.

Of course it is justice which is at stake here. If she made a tragic mistake she should still have to face the music and answer for it. If the only price she has to pay is an apology she should still make it formally under the aegis of our justice system. If she ran away of her own accord she forfeits all right to sympathy. If she is under orders then it's just another example of how the USA government holds its allies with contempt. 

Perhaps 'American envoy' is the polite way to say spy. It's suitably vague to cover a multitude of activities.

The family seem to want to understand and possibly forgive.

"We're not a horrible family. We're a usual UK family that just need to put a face to what we have now as a name."

"Talk to her, find out how she's feeling. She's got to be suffering as well - she's a mum."

"Without knowing who this person is properly, we can't begin to try and start our grieving process."

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/harry-dunn-death-anne-sacoolas-named-...

The decent thing to do, as a human, is to face up to the consequences of your actions. Given the current US leadership, you can understand where the confusion comes in. We will need to be signing trade deals with the US in the very near future, we wouldn't want to upset them. I wonder if we'll trade her for Assange. That would please many, in both governments.

Since when did criminals need a green light to leave the country? Heard of the Costa del Crime?

Maybe, but you got the gist of it.

Which is why an extradition treaty exists. It doesn't much to do with not wanting to not set a precedent, I think.

Same, did it in the US once, out in rural VA, pulled onto a major state highway and drove up the wrong carriageway, luckily realized and threw my 4x4 thing across the central reservation. Very scary. Hit the ditch hard as I crossed but made it across safely.

However she should answer questions. Maybe it was a moments lapse. But thats for the authorities to decide.

What do you think should happen if someone killed a relative of yours whilst accidentally speeding?

say they didn’t realise it was a 30 limit and we’re doing 50 and killed your relative?

After all we have all exceeded the speed limit, on purpose and by accident.

Yes, I've made plenty - none have however resulted in the death of someone!

She is guilty, of amongst other things, culpable homicide and should be charged accordingly

It seems to me that she has 2, separate cases to answer: 

1. The driving - at first glance it looks like a tragic accident, probably DWDC&A, possibly Death by Dangerous Driving. Custodial sentence extremely unlikely.

2. Doing a runner. Don't know what she should be charged with here, but she told the police she had no plans to leave the country, then promptly did. Not a good look. Attempting to Pervert the Course of Justice?, probably OTT, but she did begin upping the ante.

If she was on the wrong side of the road then her driving without doubt would be careless. As road users we have to by law operate our machinery to a required standard. Reasonable, prudent and competent are words to describe this standard. Careful drivers should drive on the correct side of the road. 
We have all made mistakes because nobody can drive to the required standard all the time. If a mistake is made and we are prosecuted then we will end up with points and a fine if it is a momentary lapse of concentration. For example, pulling out of a side road and hitting a cyclist coming down the main road. 
in the old days the consequences were not so important when determining the outcome of the case. It meant that if you pulled out and killed the cyclist you ended up with points or a ban and a fine. Now there is an offence of causing death by careless driving and the sentencing has been ramped up. 
You could expect community service or a curfew order for a momentary lapse and if it was a more sustained bit of bad driving then the sentencing starting point would be 36 weeks in prison.

The whole issue of intent is generally not relevant. If you pulled out of the junction because you were immersed in thought about something else you are guilty because you didn’t drive to the required standard.

I think is perfectable understandable that the parents want her to have to face the legal consequences. It doesn’t feel like justice if people can evade the law by moving to another country.

Whether or not it's a relative of mine is  irrelevant to the argument. Everybody is someone's relative.

Not comparable to the Sarcoolas case. People who don't see and act upon speed limits are careless first and then wilfully breaking the law.

Now we have the offence of causing death by careless driving it seems to me that a lot hangs on the semantics of the word careless. I imagine this law is designed to hit people texting and using phones, which is, if you like, wilful carelessness. Not the same in the Sarcoolas case. She was being accidentally careless. I'm sure she wasn't thinking "It doesn't really matter which side I drive on"

Me too, anyone who's driven a bit will have whether we know it or not. This is the problem with punishing mistakes and misjudgements, we often punish people not for the action or intent but for the consequences which were largely outside their control. It's unjust and has no meaningful deterrent effect because nobody chooses to make an honest mistake.

Most people who fall asleep at the wheel hit a rumble strip and wake up, no consequence, no punishment. Crash into a ditch you lose your insurance excess. Roll through the ditch onto a railway line, you're a pariah facing years in jail. It makes no sense.

No idea.

jk

The heart of the matter.

I do know that when I first got my full licence I often encountered a very unexpected hazard (finding and surviving new hazards like wet leaves in Autumn part of learning to drive not taught I suppose).  Driving on the A1 near "The Alconburys" you had to be aware that cares would join the A1 and then immediately pull in to the right hand lane sitting at 50mph, presumably thinking that was the non-overtaking lane.   I always assumed that was USAF personnel and their families, and it was disconcerting the first couple of times I encountered it.

I do recall an early trip to Scotland at night  where I was not aware that I was no longer on a dual carriageway heading for Loch Lomond and had a cold sweat when I realised my mistake after seeing headlights ahead.

And returning to Sheffield after a gap of a few months to find the traffic system had completely changed since I was last there and I'd turned in the dark into a new one way street and was facing headlights.

It is relevant in that I asked you a perfectly reasonable question and i'd quite like you to answer it.

Driving on the correct side of the road is a fundamental law in driving, if you get it wrong you break the law. It matters not how you got it wrong.

Now please stop dismissing everything with "irrelevant" or "Not comparable" and back up your argument sensibly.

If you lose your temper with somebody and punch them, that's assault.  If they fall down, hit their head and die it's manslaughter.  What part of this makes no sense?  That not everybody who hits somebody is charged with manslaughter, or that the people who hit someone who then dies as a result are?

One of the risks associated with committing a crime is that you'll accidentally commit a much more serious crime than you intended.  Same thing goes for carelessness - if someone is a bit careless while driving their car and -oops- somebody dies, it would seem weird and a bit callous to me to be railing against the injustice of the driver being in trouble with the law because they were careless and unlucky rather than the injustice of the cyclist being violently killed through no fault of their own.

It's not a crime to use diplomatic immunity if you have it.  She might well have told the police honestly she'd no plans to leave the country and then after talking to a US official been instructed to leave.  Even if she was lying it makes no difference if she's got immunity.

Given the well evidenced statistical nature of these kind of incident and accident, the fault and legal liability arguably lies with the designers, maintainers and sometimes profiters of the systems that create death and injury from the behaviour they try and harness.

I mean I opened a chainsawing venue where users had minimal, one off training up to 50 years ago, no competency tests and so on and compensated for this by making them having insurance, I’d be in jail pretty fast.  

I answered it in my way. Sorry if you don't like my answer. 

I found aspects of your post irrelevant or not comparable and explained why I thought that. 

Pretty much all sentencing is linked to the level of the consequences - otherwise you are left with either end of the scale

- either someone who kills a load of people by doing something dangerous gets off free because the last person who did the same didn't kill anyone. - In this case you are free to drive on the wrong side of the road anytime- because that one time someone did it no one got hurt.

or

- You have to lock up everyone for life who commits that action. - In this case if you are ever caught driving on the side of the road you get imprisoned because of the time a person ended up killing 20 people when they did it.

Sentencing has to be graded against the consequence.

Generally intent doesn’t really come into it. If your driving was below the required standard because you lost concentration then that is the end of the matter and you are guilty of driving without due care. If you lost control of your vehicle because of some unforeseen fault with your vehicle or some severe unexpected medical condition then you would have a defence. If I drive on the wrong side of the road because I am not paying attention then I am guilty. It doesn’t matter that I am unaccustomed to driving on the left and the unintended consequences of doing so could be very severe. Before the offence of death by careless driving was introduced, any deaths caused as a result of careless driving did not greatly feature in the sentencing as they were clearly unintended and the offence was non-imprisonable. Sometimes there would be cases with multiple deaths and the “offender” was seen by grieving families and friends to be getting away with a fine. Prosecutors had a very stark choice. It was either charge with careless or try to go for death by dangerous driving. The law was changed so that sentencing was made more severe where there was a death and offered more of a middle ground in terms of prosecution.
To what extent unintended consequences should feature in sentencing is a huge jurisprudential topic. 

I think your last line is what was behind my OP.

'due care' should be measured relative to the care exercised by the population of drivers.  The point here is that people exercising levels of care and skill of a typical driver can and do drive on the wrong side of the road for short distances when they drive in a country with the opposite system.

The problem isn't the drivers, it is that the state has decided to accept a dangerous situation which statistically is bound to result in injury or death from time to time.  It does this because it would be inconvenient for the UK to switch to driving on the right.   We need to stop thinking about punishment and start thinking about risk mitigation.   They should be sending engineers to look at the junction and the roads inside the base and thinking about measures to make this error less likely such as signs, changed road layouts or discouraging use of vehicles imported from the US on the base.

I'm thinking maybe it's time the nature of diplomatic immunity was looked into more closely. 

No you avoided answering the question because your answer would compromise your argument and now pretend you have answered it.

Are you Boris Johnson?

Due care is the standard of driving exercised by the reasonable prudent and competent driver. You don’t get cut slack if you are American, you have just passed your test the day before or any other reason. If it is a normal public road you are expected to know the rules. 
If it not uncommon for people from the base to make the same error when leaving then there should be efforts made to reduce the risk. 

Judging by what I see on a day to day basis the level of care isn't that high.

Surely it should be measured relative to the level of care EXPECTED of drivers.

Everybody knows the rules.  The problem is that a reasonably prudent and competent driver who is conditioned to drive on the right from years of experience and who ends up in a situation with insufficient cues - such as when turning onto a road at night with no other vehicles visible - can make a mistake.   Most decisions made when driving or playing sport or walking aren't fully conscious, they are trained and conditioned.

The UK could remove the risk by driving on the right or banning foreign drivers, it chooses to accept the risk because the convenience outweighs the small number of casualties that result.   

Actually I find the opposite.  When getting into my own car on the continent I can all too easily forget where I am, especially first thing in the morning, and start out on the wrong side. I would have thought this was a pretty common occurrence. dangerous as it is. It's good to see many of us owning up to this on here. 

When driving a hired LHD car,  I'm woken up by having to get in the "wrong" door (often after trying the "right" door first). I very seldom if ever find myself starting out on the wrong side of the road in that case.

Someone above noted that she may have been driving a US car with LHD. Also that the airbase may follow US traffic conventions on campus. Yes, I think a court would accept these as mitigating circumstances (but I would hope with a recommendation that the driving rules on the base are changed). With others, I don't think a custodial sentence would be warranted, unless perhaps she was texting or similar, but a substantial fine and loss of licence for a period would be appropriate. I doubt though that we have a reciprocal arrangement whereby loss of licence would apply in the US.

I don't think she should be blamed for returning to the US in what must have been traumatic circumstances. But, having had time for reflection, she should now return and face trial in the UK.

Trump's misguided attempts to intervene have helped no-one. I fear he has such a high opinion of himself that he thinks granting a private audience to the parents amounts to atonement for the crime.

Martin 

I disagree. She can be blamed. IMO we all have to take responsibility for our actions, whether traumatic to us or not

Perhaps it would have been a little less aggressive had you started your post IMHO.

I regard the last bit as just puerile abuse.

IMHO I Really CBA. 

I've briefly driven on the left in Font after exiting a parking spot. No harm done. However, if I had accidentally killed someone I would expect and deserve the book thrown at me. Accidents are accidents but we have laws to try to prevent accidental death. Building sites here would like Qatar if the 'but we didn't mean to kill them' ethic was acceptable. 

I doubt there as anything as sinister as that going on at all. If you're a Diplomat or spouse of with diplomatc immunity you're instructed from the start not to admit to anything, don't engage with anyone and you're normally given the in country secret service police diplomacy department phone number to call in basically anything.

If anything happens, you don't have to answer to anything. You have to report what happened but then you have the choice to either turn yourself over or head to the nearest diplomatic immunity sanctioned area (Embassy, host military base etc) and there's nothing anyne can do about it. From there you're given advice and depending on the severity of whatever happened you can either stay in the host country or leave immediately. The reason she ended up in the White House is because he is a serving Diplomat and the US Diplomatic Service administration is now in the White House whereas before it was the Reagan Building and any cases are seen as soon as they land back in their host country.

It's a total travesty but I would say there's no way the US wll extradite her back to the UK despite now having lost her immunity due to this.

Obviously, this is a false dichotomy and a simplistic qualitative argument about a quantitative problem.

It's nothing to do with what the last person did, it's about the overall statistics.   Driving on the wrong side of the road for a short distance is a mistake which many and quite possibly most drivers make at least once when they go to a different country which drives on the opposite side.  Just look at the number of people who have posted saying they've done it.

If we were dealing with AI systems driving robot cars we'd think about this far more dispassionately and consider the capabilities of the sensors and processors and the overall likelihood of accident compared with other risks.   With humans we've got this totally naive expectation of perfection when, just like the AI drivers, our sensors and processing are demonstrably flawed. 

It is not an expectation of perfection. It is an expectation of being responsible for our mistakes.

If I were caught driving on the wrong side of the road in another country by the police I would expect some kind of consequence.

Whether or not that should be a jail sentence is immaterial to question of whether am I culpable for not being careful enough. 

If I am caught speeding by a camera, I am culpable and will get a fine, whether or not I'm familar with KPH. You have a duty to familiarise yourself with the laws of the country you are visiting. 

I get that we've all gotten away with things in the past but your reaction to making a serious and dangerous mistake driving shouldn't be 'honest mistake, doesn't matter' it should be 'thank f*ck I didn't injure or kill anyone, I really need to not do that'.