How Is It Worth Jail Time?!
How on earth can driving whilst using a mobile phone a bad enough offence to warrant jail time? Especially for two years! Yes, it’s stupid and dangerous - nobody is claiming that it isn’t - but it sure as hell isn’t worth the potential sentence of two years in jail. Especially at a time when the prisons are so overcrowded that they are releasing real criminals early!
Even the idea of a custodial sentence for such a minor crime is ridiculous, especially considering the current state of the prison system. And two years is an absurdly long length of time in itself. People commit far more serious crimes than driving whilst using a mobile phone and get shorter jail sentences.
This is a policy aimed solidly at the middle-class, aiming to criminalise them. Just give larger fines and more points to the perpetrators, and raise the penalties for actual dangerous or reckless driving and it’s results.
Sources: BBC, The Telegraph, The Guardian
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Two years for using a mobile whilst driving is good.
I’d also give 12 months to anyone using a mobile on a bus, in a pub or any other public place.
I’m in favour of stiffer penalties, but as you say, not custodial. I’d also like to see much larger penalties for people actually involved in accidents. Something like “If you were on the phone at the time you were involved in an accident then the accident is your fault, your insurance company isn’t liable for a penny, and the NHS will be billing you for your treatment.” I’ve long thought something similar about seatbelts - not that the accident is your fault, but the consequences are.
Yet again, a piece of news over something that’s not actually changed.
Driving whilst chatting on your mobile can easily be a component element of dangerous driving. Always has been (remember, before three points were introduced dangerous driving was the only way or prosecuting for driving whilst chatting).
No-one would object that causing death by dangerous driving should result in a custodial sentence. No-one would object that such dangerous driving can include chatting on your mobile.
So why do people object to dangerous driving, without killing anyone, shouldn’t result in custody.
It will be very rare. But chatting will only be one factor. And if someone’s chatting on their mobile whilst changing the radio and putting on their make-up - they need to made an example of.
People need to remember, driving a car is being in charge of a dangerous weapon, and as such requires concentration.
Bystander also has an interesting take on this.
Because they haven’t killed anyone, Asp, and so shouldn’t have to suffer a custodial sentence for it. lots of crimes - real crimes - carry a risk of hurting or killing someone, yet they don’t carry the possibility of a custodial sentence, which as a trainee lawyer, you should.
If this sets a precedent, then there should be custodial sentences for speeding, mugging, burglary, rape…
It is quite simply absurd.
I hope you missed a word there TD, I think sending all Law Students to prison is a bit on the harsh side!
The thing to stress - driving with a mobile phone will not result in anyone being sent to jail.
What it will do though is aggravate already dangerous driving. Which always has had the potential of a custodial sentence being given.
Yes, they might not have killed anyone by virtue of the dangerous driving. But that’s more luck than judgement. If someone was acting dangerously with a gun, you’d expect the full force of the law to come down on them. Why should a car be any different?
Well that depends on what I feel like at the time…
Cars have uses other than killing. A gun doesn’t.