This is a truly monstrous piece of law …
An American who had been in the country for only a few hours killed three men as he drove a hire car on the wrong side of the road. Engineer Nathan Doud, 27, smashed into their car in pitch darkness when he mistakenly believed he was on a dual carriageway.
Yesterday he was jailed for 20 months after admitting causing death by dangerous driving. Leeds Crown Court heard that Doud, from Ventura, California, frequently travelled around the world in his job with an optical machinery company. On July 30 he flew to Newcastle at short notice from Switzerland to complete a repair job in Durham.
Afterwards he hired a Citroen C4 to get to Heathrow for a flight back to the U.S. to see his daughter. Using a satnav, he joined the unlit single-carriage A656, which he believed was a dual carriageway because of the broken central line, which denotes a dual carriageway in the U.S.
He travelled for 900 yards on the wrong side of the road before smashing into a Ford Fiesta driven by electrician David Bell, 51, with passengers Stephen Thackwray, 57, and Brian Lewis, 55.
Mr Bell was the designated driver taking his friends home from a nearby pub in Garforth, Leeds. Doud immediately phoned the emergency services - dialling 911 because he did not know the number used in the UK - and broke down in tears when a witness told him that the three men were dead.
The court heard that Mr Thackwray and Mr Lewis were not wearing seat-belts.
Prosecutor Mehran Nessiri said that Doud should have noticed a series of signs showing he was not on a dual carriageway. Judge Geoffrey Marson QC ordered Doud to serve at least ten months of the sentence. He said the tragedy resulted from 'lack of experience, confusion as to his route and failure to see or understand traffic indicators'. He added 'It is not suggested that the defendant intended any harm to anyone.'
It's worth pointing out that the judge paid no attention to the fact that Mr.Doud walked away from the accident, suggesting that the impact wasn't overwhelming and that the three victims probably didn't survive because they weren't wearing their seatbelts
The man made a mistake. It was a bad mistake, and it had serious and tragic consequences, but it was a mistake nevertheless, and a mistake is not a crime and shouldn't be treated as one.
Other people are allowed to make mistakes. Tony Blair made a mistake when he believed that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. It was a mistake that cost many British servicemen their lives, but nobody has seriously suggested that Blair should be jailed for it.
The policemen who shot a young Brazilian man on a tube train made a dreadful mistake, but few people really think they should go to prison for it. Last year an old man in a Belfast hospital was injected using the wrong kind of syringe. He received 100 times the proper dose, and died. The doctor is not expecting a prison sentence. It was a mistake.
Not so long ago the newspapers reported the sad story of a young father playing with his baby who tripped and fell on the child, killing him. He hasn't been charged. Wilco van Rooijen, the leader of a team of Dutch climbers on K2, admitted that mistakes had cost the lives of 11 climbers earlier this year, but the police aren't waiting by his hospital bed until he's well enough to arrest and lock up.
So once again, mistakes are regrettable, they should be avoided at all costs, but they are not crimes.
And treating them as such is not law. It's just revenge, and we should be ashamed. It's the vicious revenge of the car-hating left-wing tree-huggers who've seized control of our legislative processes and who'd rather we all stayed at home twiddling our thumbs and not getting in their way.
This is a supposedly civilised nation. We should leave revenge to the good jihadists of Pakistan and Somalia.
The GOS says: Some months ago I was driving up the A140 in Suffolk on a short stretch of dual carriageway, going pretty fast in the outside lane, and came face to face with someone in a Mondeo driving straight at me. Miraculously there was space for me to pull over and he missed me.
What you're supposed to say in cases like this is that I was frightened out of my wits and saw my life flash by me. Sadly I wasn't, and didn't - it all happened too fast.
But I am very puzzled: what the driver of that car did was exactly - exactly - the same as Nathan Doud, with possibly less excuse as he wasn't a foreigner. The only difference was that nobody was killed - but that was a matter of luck, not judgement. The mistake, or offence if you must, was the same.
What kind of law is it that differentiates on the basis of luck?
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2008 The GOS
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