JESSICA WILLIAMS 120YEARS FOR TRACE AMOUNTS OF THC : LA IMC

Jessica Williams was rightly found culpable in the

deaths of the pedestrians, but for the wrong reasons.

The medical technicians and other specialists believe

that Jessica drove while asleep at the wheel, not while

intoxicated. Thus, she is guilty of reckless driving

resulting in the deaths or grievous injuries of several

people. She should be subject to the same standards of

liability that apply to the operator of any heavy and

dangerous equipment who, by their reckless conduct, cause

the deaths of numerous people. The appropriate penalty

may not be life in prison, but it is, at a minimum, some

prison time, and an absolute lifetime ban on ever sitting

behind the wheel of a motor vehicle.

Right now, we have a double standard in this country, one

which is responsible for untold suffering and destruction

of innocent lives. And that double standard is: kill with

a car while sober, no matter how reckless, and, so long as

intent is not proven, you'll face at worst a point or two

on your driving record. But drive while intoxicated even

without killing, and you may go to jail. Of course, such

a policy as this has nothing to do with public safety. It

is simply a reflection of two things: the irrational and

fanatical war on drugs, and the car culture that posits the

absolute supremacy of the motor vehicle over our landscape.

Below is a letter from Simon Baddeley and colleagues to

authorities in England regarding the issue of traffic

safety in that country, a letter whose contents are highly

relevant to this discussion. Though the context is England,

almost every observation below applies equally to this

country and the case in hand concerning Jessica Williams.

If we take to heart the considerations and observations in

this letter, we can't fail to conclude that Ms. Williams

case calls for severe penalties, but for different reasons

than invoked by her prosecutors.

Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 15:07:29 -0000 From: "Simon

Baddeley" <s.j.baddeley@bham.ac.uk>

Subject: RESPONSE TO THE ROAD TRAFFIC OFFENCES PENALTIES

REVIEW

6 March 2001

Jisha Salim, Sentencing and Offences Unit, Home

Office, 50 Queen Anne's Gate, LONDON, SW1H 9AT; fax

020 7273 4345; e-mail jisha.salim@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/cpd/sou/rtpcons.pdf

Dear Jisha Salim,

RESPONSE TO THE ROAD TRAFFIC OFFENCES PENALTIES REVIEW The

first part of this response focuses on the 4 co-signers of

this letter. It aims to convey the knowledge, experience

and values that might lead you to regard our views as

helpful to your timely review of road traffic offence

penalties. It is prepared in some haste but with a sincere

wish to make a positive response to the invitation to

consult on a most welcome policy development.

The response is not assembled as a point-by-point response

to specific items as requested. We apologise for this and

hope that the Home Office may still glean some helpful

advice from what follows.

The Road Traffic Offences Penalties Review can mark a shift

in attitude to driving in the UK. These changes must affect

all of us. We believe that they will benefit the majority

- drivers and non-car-drivers alike - but political will

is required to resist a vocal minority of interests who

will claim this review infringes their rights, but in the

matter of road traffic offences the government can win

hearts and minds by strengthening the law.

We are four citizens who, though interested in

and affected by transport issues, do not represent

anyone but ourselves. Three of us work together.

Professor John Raine, Director of the Institute of Local

Government Studies, Birmingham University, has spent many

years researching the Magistracy on behalf of the Home

Office. He is a Green party Councillor for Malvern District

Council. Ray Puffitt is Senior Lecturer at Birmingham

University with wide experience of regulatory processes in

Local Government. Simon Baddeley lectures as an associate

of the same department. He commutes and travels across

the UK by bicycle, walking and public transport and has

an interest in the role played by transport in urban

regeneration.

Our decision to write a joint response arose in connection

with the death, in a road crash, of Ray Puffitt's only

daughter, Jane, on 25 March last year. Jane's death

affected all who worked with Ray and convinced us of the

need for a shift of direction in sentencing policy and its

context as this relates to driving behaviour. We welcome

this Review.

To ensure our views would not look like an attempt to

create law based on a specific tragedy or bias policy

towards punishing a particular individual we enlisted

our fourth respondent Martin Ward. Martin is a family

friend of Simon Baddeley. More than the rest of us,

Martin relies on driving cars for work and leisure. His

business is reliant on road transport by car and van.

In 29 years, at his conservative estimate, Martin has

covered over a million miles in 57 cars and at least 20

motorcycles. At 18 he had a minor motorcycle accident which

made him determined to pay "ultimate attention at all times

whilst in charge of a motor vehicle". He has had no form

of road traffic accident since. A successful businessman,

Martin recently qualified as a member of the Institute of

Advanced Motorists (IAM) and has successfully encouraged

his employees to seek IAM certification.

We believe that your review should take forward the

principle that driving a car (or other motor vehicle) is

a privilege and not a right. To earn and keep the right

to drive, a citizen must demonstrate on-going competence

throughout their life in the form of driving skill and

care for others. We use, as an analogy, the written

and unwritten laws of the sea about care for self and

others in a hazardous environment. The same is taken for

granted among train drivers, airline pilots and, though

still far from widely accepted, among a growing minority

of motorists.

As well as the contempt that should attach to bad driving,

the law should provide sanctions against those unwilling to

demonstrate competence and care when driving. This should

be a sanction that would regard exceeding a speed limit

of 20 or 30 mph as being as serious as a faster breach

of the law. Thus, manoeuvring at relatively slow but

inappropriate speed within an enclosed space can be quite

as serious in its consequences for others as disobeying

higher speed restrictions.

It is difficult to get to the controls of a train, bus,

plane or ship if one is of an inappropriate age for the

requirements of the job, sleepy, ill or intoxicated and

have not passed regular tests of one's fitness for that

responsibility. It remains extraordinarily easy for someone

in any of these conditions to get behind the wheel of a

motor vehicle - as temptingly easy now as it was when

A.A.Milne described Toad's miscreant car theft in the

1920s. It is equally easy to do the same thing even though

unqualified, uninsured and legally banned from driving by

a court.

While driving a car, actions that would be prohibited or

looked upon with extreme disapproval if done by anyone in

charge of a plane, ship, train or bus, such as non-journey

related chats with passengers, changing a tape or disk,

tuning a radio into an entertainment station, listening

to it, speaking on a mobile phone, lighting a cigarette,

looking at a map, wiping a window or adjusting a seat

while moving, are not only legal but in many cases

widely considered acceptable when in charge of a motor

vehicle. Yet the road is an environment as hazardous as

air, sea or railway.

Changing current road traffic behaviour requires a shift in

values which extends to the Home Office itself - certainly

to the writer of the introduction to the review. While

the government is arguing elsewhere that the "sheer

number of road traffic offences is staggering" [footnote:

"In England and Wales alone in 1997, 2.2 million motoring

offences went to court, and a further 1.6 million offences

were dealt with by official police action or fixed penalty

notices, excluding parking and obstructions offences. More

go undetected, some of them serious. A great many, though

not all, affect road safety directly. Para 10.5 Department

of the Environment, Transport and the Regions Tomorrow's

roads: safer for everyone The Government's road safety

strategy and casualty reduction targets for 2010] the Home

Office consultation suggests, with limited evidence, that

the review should, by and large limit itself to eliminating

the behaviour of a marginal group of "recklessly bad

drivers" (Para. 8.2). The review seems - and forgive us if

this is a misreading - to seek special consideration for

"the overwhelming majority of traffic offences" because

they are committed by "decent, responsible and basically

law abiding people, in circumstances where tiredness,

impatience, a moment's carelessness or haste can have

serious consequences for the safety of themselves

and others." This paragraph reveals like the driving

behaviour that needs re-examining, a misperception of the

pervasiveness of the problem.

The view that most offenders are "law-abiding" is

a mitigation that steers the courts away from the

need to use the law to influence and modify driving

behaviour throughout the population of present and future

drivers. Placing your main focus on "bad" drivers, though

we are all for recognising the fact of repeat offenders

and do not gainsay their miscreance, can be compared to

the attempts by some reformers to mitigate the injustice

of slavery by eliminating "bad" slave owners rather than

the institution.

Driving, despite being much more widespread and accessible

than piloting a plane, handling a ship or driving a

train, needs to acquire the same esteem, responsibilities

and liabilities that attend control over those forms

of transport. Given the statistics of road related

deaths, relative to deaths linked to these other forms of

transport, it will seem astonishing to future generations

that the apparatus for public protection that surrounds

rail, air and sea travel is not linked to road movement.

If you consider liability on these terms the issue

of the crash, and attendant injury and/or death that

results is as much the responsibility of the "good"

motorist who makes a "pilot error" as the "bad motorist"

on whom your review seems to be focusing. The officer

in charge of a lost or damaged naval vessel is allowed

and required to face an automatic court martial.

Infinitesimally few marine officers, airline pilots

or train drivers intentionally cause disasters, but

there is a sophisticated legislative and investigative

apparatus in place to establish innocence, liability,

negligence and degrees of criminality where there has

been damage, injury or death. These procedures are taken

for granted. They are seen as protecting the standards of

the relevant professions, serving the interests of victims

and a wider public interest. The same must be applied to

being in charge of a motor vehicle.

Shifting the scope of liability for driving offences

promises to benefit non-drivers and drivers alike

and present drivers who would like, in line with

government policy, to use cars less. They know about

exhaust pollution. They experience more and more road

congestion. They realise alternatives won't work unless

people switch in large numbers to other ways of getting

around. But the public space needed to take to the

streets to walk or cycle and take trains and buses is

not available.

The apparent reduction in reported road traffic casualties

during 1999 (DETR) is misleading, not so much because

of statistical anomalies but because the figures do not

show how road safety education, by its effectiveness

at spreading the word from the earliest age about the

dangers of road traffic, has helped reduce casualties by

removing potential victims - voluntarily and compulsorily -

from public space. Many citizens have come rightly to see

public space as hazardous for themselves, and perilous

for their children. They are reluctant to enter it except

to take a few paces between their car - if they have one -

home, school and shopping centre. It is not surprising that

lack of exercise, sometimes leading to problems of obesity

will surface in early middle age [Footnote: Di Guiseppi,

Carolyn, Li, Leah and Roberts, Ian (1998): 'Influence of

Travel Patterns on Mortality from Injury among Teenagers

in England and Wales 1985-95: trend analysis' British

Medical Journal. Volume 316 pp.904-905 "Reduced walking and

cycling have undoubtedly contributed to declines in overall

physical activity, a cause of increasing obesity in British

children. The curtailment of independent mobility may

also have important adverse effects on children's mental,

physical and emotional development." LTP predictions of

road traffic growth suggests these trends are increasing.]

Far too much public space has been taken out of circulation

for all but cars by dangerous road traffic. The law can

reclaim this space. We are pleased to see many agencies

being required by government to exercise "joined-up"

thinking about what makes city life attractive and

civilised. As a result, official bodies pressed by

voluntary campaigning groups and charities are responding

in a concerted way to concerns which for years have been

viewed as eccentric. These changes in attitude to the

unconditional benefits of car travel are seen by some as

assaults on common sense, but common sense is altering

under the weight of accumulating private realisations

about what makes a city liveable and local economies more

sustainable. The Road Traffic Offence Penalties Review

can help ensure these experiences are built into urban

regeneration.

Last year the Home Secretary's "Crime and Disorder" Bill

included traffic behaviour that "local people perceive

to be unsafe". This marked a pivotal moment in changing

entrenched attitudes to road traffic - long seen as a

positive influence on local economies. The Home Secretary

both through the present review and his earlier guidelines

for Statutory Crime and Disorder Partnerships is defining

traffic behaviour as a dimension of community safety and

urban regeneration. This bold "appreciative judgement"

can is complemented by road traffic penalties aimed

at removing driving behaviour that, as surely as street

robbery, blights local economies. Simon Baddeley, Chair of

his local residents' association, and a "Neighbourhood

Watch" co-ordinator sees cars, vans, motorbikes and

even mini-buses driving through his own and surrounding

residential streets at speeds far in excess of speed limits

turning communal space into "an unofficial factory floor."

We all agree that driving a motor vehicle - despite claims

to the contrary - is actually becoming more dangerous

despite improved technology and roads. This danger is

masked by the steps people have been forced to take to

avoid it. The explanations are varied and debatable but

we agree the main reason is that society has changed and

with it, attitudes to the car. We are not denying the car

its convenience. The problem is that the car has become

too widely elevated from a useful form of transport, to a

status symbol and than a weapon in which too many of our

fellow citizens are liable to live out their personal

problems. Car advertising encourages this, promoting

the car as a means of expression that has nothing to

with using it to get conveniently from A to B. We have

created a "car-culture" analogous to the "gun-culture"

so robustly undermined after Dunblane. Like "gun

culture", "car-culture" is not sustained by a minority of

psychopaths, but by an enormous number of self-proclaimed

law abiding citizens. The difference between gun and car

cultures is that "car culture" is more dangerous.

The "mis"-use of the motorcar by "decent law-abiding

people" must be tackled. It requires political will. We

fully support the government's reiterated point that

the measures contemplated are not "anti-car". Ministers

defending their stringency must not be diverted by claims

that these measure restrict freedom. These measures can

make cars safer for those inside and outside them. They are

liberating. Measures to restrict the use of cars in cities

and to introduce car parking charges and congestion charges

are designed for the convenience of drivers and non-drivers

alike and promise to recover choices that have been taken

away by the growth of an over-dependency on cars. This

dependency congests roads and lessens the freedom of all

travellers - drivers and non-drivers alike - forcing onto

into cars many people who would use alternative transport

if it were available.

The car is not our target. Government action must change

driving standards. This must be achieved by education

including advertising and legislation. Driving a car,

for work or pleasure, should be seen - with pride - as

involving the responsibilities that attend ship handling,

flying and train driving. Being a responsible, aware,

capable driver must be elevated to being "trendy" at the

point where the young person gets access to a car.

We propose the current driving test be elevated to the

level required by the IAM. We suggest a rich combination

of stick and carrot be used to make this retrospective

for all drivers. The difficult thing about passing such

a test is less technical than attitudinal. The new test

should be phased in over 3-5 years and done by age groups

starting with the youngest.

We would make the new photocard licences mandatory and

valid for 3 years. Renewal, as with a pilot's licence,

would be subject to a sight test, reaction time test and a

driving simulator so that GPs can assess an individual's

physical ability to drive. For over 65s, this renewal

should be an annual event where it would offer the

collateral benefit of health checks in line with local

Health Improvement Plans (HIMPs).

We are uncomfortable with penalties that entail clamping

and forfeiture of vehicles on the grounds that is a legal

minefield which would allow too much evasion via insurance

and which would miss out on offences committed in cars

hired or taken without permission. On the other hand,

we approve these measures for unfit vehicles and suggest

that driving and/or owning such vehicles be included

within the penalties tariff as occasion for forfeiture.

Thus we would ask the government to ban the welding of

used cars and take out of circulation cars that have had

this kind of "repair". Apart from helping the environment,

this would remove, from hazard to themselves and others,

cars which have failed or will fail their next MOT, are

therefore uninsured and untaxed and being driven with bald

tyres and bad brakes.

We conclude on the role of imprisonment. This February the

young man who while intoxicated, unlicensed and uninsured,

was driving the car - not is own - in which Ray and Anne

Puffitt's daughter, Jane, and Stacey Parry, the only

daughter of another couple, were killed, pleaded guilty to

dangerous driving and was sent to prison for 6 years. Ray

and Anne expressed the view (and who more qualified?) after

the sentence that they were uncertain that this penalty

struck the right balance between retribution, redemption

and deterrence. They, and we, share their view that in a

situation like this a sentence of this length may do little

good. What would have been more relevant and preferable

would have been a "sharp" custodial sentence of, say, 12

months and a lifetime's driving ban. As it is the driver

has received a driving ban of 7 years concurrent with his

prison sentence with a requirement to take an extended test

after that period. We believe in sentences which reflect

circumstances in which an individual has forfeited the

privilege of driving for the rest of their life.

Long prison sentences should be confined to that category

of criminal who having been disqualified from driving gets

back into a car. Someone caught driving when disqualified

should, even if no other offence has occurred, be liable

to a sentence of 5 years. If a disqualified driver kills

or injures another person a life sentence should be

available to the courts. We realise that the imposition

of tougher sentences will rest on changing attitudes in

the population at large and that these views will come to

be reflected in sentences - if they are available. They

shouldn't be mandatory.

We realise that to some a lifetime ban might after, say 10

years, seem unreasonable. It is nothing to the sentence

imposed on those bereaved by the behaviour that led to

the sentence. While recognising its intended strictness -

especially within what we have referred to as the mind-set

of "car-culture" - we know that there are other ways of

getting about (with prospects of these improving in the

future) and that living a good life without driving a

motor vehicle is feasible. We believe that for certain

cases, such as that of the young man whose driving led

to the death of Jane Puffitt, a life time driving ban

represents a reasonable loss of privilege. It would be

a sentence with which juries would be happier and which,

in the circumstances we have described, could play a more

effective part in changing popular attitudes than long

prison sentences.

Courts which might balk at the long prison sentences we

want for driving while disqualified, could impose a life

time's driving ban and in so doing send a message from

society that driving a car is a privilege that in certain

tragic circumstances - such as those that prompted this

letter - can be forfeit forever.

Yours sincerely

Dr John Raine, 33 West Malvern Road Malvern WR14 4NG 01684

5650521 Simon Baddeley, 34 Beaudesert Road Handsworth

Birmingham B20 3TG 0121 554 9794 Ray Puffitt, Rockend, 23b

Cecil Road Weston-super-Mare BS23 2NG 01934 633710 Martin

Ward, 2 Lahn Drive Droitwich Spa WR9 8TQ 01905 772278

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JESSICA WILLIAMS 120YEARS FOR TRACE AMOUNTS OF THC

Drivers License Should NOT be License to Kill