Causing Death by Careless Driving

The law states that the test is an objective one. What that means is that it doesn’t matter what the driver him/herself thinks about the standard his/her driving. What matters is what a reasonable person would consider reasonable in the circumstances. The fact that a driver has not long passed his test does not excuse him from driving carelessly (although it may be mitigation). The driving must be judged at the time of the incident. Therefore the question is: “were his actions reasonable in the circumstances?”. It does not matter that with hindsight, he may have acted differently.

There are specific court sentencing guidelines which set out the range of penalties — a list of factors which the court should take into account when sentencing is provided. The guidelines can be found here.

The cases which may not result in custody are typically those where the driving involved only a momentary lapse of concentration, with no aggravating features. The lowest penalty suggested by the guidelines is a low-level community order.

The court will determine each case on its facts, taking into account the circumstances of the driver.

An aggravating factor may lead the court to conclude that a higher penalty should be imposed.

Examples given in the guidelines include:

• Where there are other offences committed at the same time, such as driving other than in accordance with the terms of a valid licence; driving while disqualified; driving without insurance; taking a vehicle without consent; driving a stolen vehicle
• Previous convictions for motoring offences, particularly offences that involve bad driving
• More than one person was killed as a result of the offence
• Serious injury to one or more persons in addition to the death(s)
• Irresponsible behaviour, such as failing to stop or falsely claiming that one of the victims was responsible for the collision

The above list is not exhaustive.

The Court must balance these against any mitigating factors

This list is by no means exhaustive, but examples of careless driving include: overtaking on the inside or driving inappropriately close to another vehicle; inadvertent mistakes such as driving through a red light, turning right into the path of an oncoming vehicle, or emerging from a side road into the path of another vehicle; or short distractions such as tuning a car radio or programming a sat nav. It doesn’t have to be much to be classed as careless driving. It’s often just a momentary negligent error of judgment or a single negligent manoeuvre, which in reality all of us have probably made at some point. Some of us have just been lucky, in that nothing more serious happened as a result so that we didn’t face a careless driving allegation.

This will be decided at the first hearing which will be in the magistrates’ court. The magistrates or presiding district judge will hear representations from the prosecution about where the case should be heard. The defence can also make representations.

The court will then make a decision about whether the case should be heard in the crown or magistrates court.

If the court decides that the case is suitable for a magistrates’ court, you still have the choice to elect for the case to be heard in the crown court. You need to take legal advice before making this decision as there are pros and cons of either venue.

If the court decides that the case should be dealt with by the crown court, you cannot choose to have it heard in the magistrates’ court.

Without question, yes!

In these very sad and serious cases, you risk imprisonment, even if you have never been in trouble with the police before.