Category - Bad Drivers

This story from Staffordshire (link now dead) tells how Callum Lines, 19, took a car without telling the owner, and “panicked” when police tried to stop him. He got up to speeds of 90mph in Tamworth. When he was finally stopped by several police cars, he refused to get out and police smashed the windows to drag him out.

In the car were two 14-year old girls and a 17-year old girl.

The story (and, no doubt, public sympathy) appears to dwell on the plight of these darling little girls at the sole expense of Lines. I’m going to take the more objective position and point out that they bloody well knew what they were doing when they got in the car with Lines, so they easily share in a significant part of the guilt.

In fact Lines, his passengers, and the girl he stole the car off sound like a class group of individuals all round, and provide all the evidence needed for why insurance is so high for 17-24 year olds in the first place. You see, Lines only had a provisional licence and no insurance. Since he took the car without permission, he effectively stole it. Furthermore, he could have killed someone as a result of his childish behaviour.

You will note from the story that the best defence his lawyer could come up with was that Lines was “a very immature young man”.

You will also note that he was sentenced to six months youth custody, suspended for two years, banned from driving for two years, and ordered to take an extended test when he eventually gets there. Not a lot, really.

This story makes you wonder how this guy will behave if – God forbid – he were ever to gain a driving licence.

At 37, Alexssandro Osti is far from being young – at least physically – but he sure could be considered extremely immature. The idiot was spotted not wearing a seatbelt, and when police tried to stop him he raced off at speeds of around 60mph. He drove on the wrong side of roads, narrowly missed colliding with another vehicle, appears to have cornered on only two wheels, and then crashed into a wall. He was unaccompanied and had no licence.

In a continuation of the comedy act which passes for The Law in England, Osti was given 200 hours of unpaid community service, some sort of course, banned for 2 years, and ordered to take an extended test. He should have been imprisoned and banned for life – and deported. Mitigation said he was “a man of previous good character” – so good, in fact, that he had obviously been driving around for an unspecified period of time without a licence, probably without a seatbelt, and also probably no supervising driver. Yes, a man of excellent character.

Compare that with this Scottish case, where Pauline Medhurst, an ex-driving instructor, was found slumped behind the wheel of her car and discovered to be four times the legal drink-drive limit. She tried the usual trick – post-natal depression – and although it prevented a custodial sentence (Scotland is still too close to England to be entirely free of stupidity in its laws), she was slapped with a two-year community payback order, 300 hours of community service, and banned for 40 months.

By my reckoning, her sentence was approximately twice as stiff as Osti’s.

I wrote recently about the problem of elderly drivers. This in itself was simply a development of the Cassie McCord tragedy, where an elderly driver who simply should not have been on the road killed a 16-year old girl. In the footnote to that particular story, I linked to three further stories where elderly drivers had killed or maimed innocent people.

Well, this story just came in on the newsfeeds. It tells how Cyril Titcombe, 82, did a U-turn on the M4 and collided head on with another driver as he drove the wrong way. Both he and the innocent other driver were killed. The story suggests that Titcombe had been having problems with his memory.

As I said in several previous posts on this subject, something has got to be done about these elderly idiots who lie about their health to keep their licences and put everyone else’s lives at risk.

You couldn’t make it up! Another story tells how Norah Nicole Rimmer, 19, stole a car, failed to stop or report an accident, had no insurance, and committed an undisclosed offence relating to her driving licence. She was aided by Holly Louise Smith, 20.

Rimmer got an 18-week suspended prison sentence, a curfew, and banned for a year. Smith, the passenger, was also banned for a year and received a 6-month community order. They have also been ordered to have no contact with each other.

If you read the report, the defence lawyer’s attempts at mitigation are something of an understatement:

Fiona Larking, for Rimmer, said her client had mental health problems. That night she had got into a situation she did not want to be in and decided to leave the house. The party she had been invited to only involved four people. She became anxious and took the car keys. Her client had led a traumatic and chaotic life and was ‘an extremely troubled young lady’. Smith was the passenger in the car, she went to the party but did not remember leaving. She was very intoxicated.

There’s no mention of drink-driving in the list of things she was found guilty of.

If she has mental health problems the last thing she should ever be allowed to do is get in a car as the driver. She should be kept away from them permanently.