ISSUE 5 2008 - Sweet & Maxwell

Crim. L.R. Causing Death by Driving and Other Offences 339
Causing Death by Driving and Other
Offences: A Question of Balance
By Michael Hirst *
Professor of Criminal Justice, De Montfort University
Causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving; Causing death by
dangerous driving; Causing death by driving; Sentence length; Sentencing
guidelines
Summary: This article examines road traffic homicide offences and argues that current
sentencing practice in relation to them has become disproportionately punitive and
severe, at least in cases where death results from a simple human error, rather than
from wilfully culpable driving.
Introduction
There is a widespread belief that motorists who cause fatal accidents are treated
leniently by the courts. The red-top tabloids, pressure groups and local newspapers,
in particular, have campaigned long and hard for greater severity in the punishment
of ‘‘killer drivers’’, often by focusing on individual cases in which it is claimed that
justice was not done. A common complaint is that such motorists ought to face
charges of manslaughter, instead of the less serious offence of causing death by
dangerous driving (CDDD) under the Road Traffic Act 1988 s.1.
Such complaints may once have had some validity. The s.1 offence once attracted
much lower penalties than it does today, 1 and is derived from an offence first created
as a ‘‘soft option’’ because juries were considered reluctant to convict motorists of
anything as serious as manslaughter. 2
A study of modern sentencing guidelines and decisions of the Court of Appeal
reveals a very different picture, however. A series of increases in both maximum and
guideline penalties for death by driving offences means that motorists convicted
of such offences are now punished more severely than most other involuntary
killers. Cases of manslaughter by gross negligence (other than road traffic cases)
typically attract lower sentences, which have changed little in recent years. Even
when we turn to constructive manslaughter, where longer sentences are sometimes
imposed, many cases involving deliberate, savage and unprovoked physical violence,
*My thanks to Gavin Dingwall for his helpful comments on a first draft of this article.
1 The maximum penalty has been increased from 5 to 10 years and then to 14 years’
imprisonment, in addition to obligatory disqualification.
2 In a debate on what was to become the Road Traffic Act 1956 s.1, Lord Goddard said:
‘‘Juries hate the word ‘manslaughter’. They see in front of them ...15 years, or something of
that sort. They associate manslaughter with murder trials ...’’, Hansard, HL Vol.191, col.86
(1955).
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