What is it about drivers and driving that is hated so much by the Westminster Metropolitan Elite? Life jail for an accident? ( March 29th). Let's remind Mssrs Grayling & Cameron that there are 32 million drivers without whom our society would cease and most of us would die from lack of basics.
You wouldn't believe from the anti driver rhetoric in the UK, that after about 300 billion drivers miles a year, there's less death on the road from all causes than from accidents in the home, more people die of strangulation and hanging and more from self harm. Far more than that die from thirst whilst in hospital too.
So UK's drivers are doing much better than their treatment deserves. Given that planes and trains don't have opposing traffic or humans and animals mixing with them, how can Grayling and Cameron condone a highly dangerous scenario from economic expedience and then clamour to jail people for long periods when it goes wrong and accidents happen?
A massive imbalance of justice and evidence already exists when it comes to drivers.
Dangerous or careless driving are both entirely subjective based on the opinions of ordinary, often hostile witnesses. That isn't allowed for murderers or robbers where only experts are able to give their opinion.
A murderer sets out deliberately to kill, and yet, even in the worst cases, it was never the intention of drivers. To suggest, as several anti driver MPs have and as expressed in your article, that the sentence should be based on the number killed is simply to fail to understand that it was from and as a result of the one act and not deliberately the aim to kill more than one; as a murderer does.
If a driver makes a mistake, the result varies from nothing at all, to bent metal, to serious injury and to death but from the same act and intent. How can an action, which one day is of no police interest, suddenly change, from the horrible coincidence that human flesh intervened, to a long term in prison?
There is no place for emotionalism when talking about jailing drivers. Losing someone dear still doesn't turn people in road safety experts or advocates of sentencing either.
Keith Peat
Drivers' Union
Letter in response to an article demanding jail based on the number of victims of a road accident. See the piece here.
