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Police Law 11th Edition

16. Driving Offences

Chapter 16

Dangerous manner p 607

The case referred to in paragraph 4 has been overruled by the Court of Appeal. The accused’s special skill as a driver (eg that the accused had taken a police advanced police driving course) is an irrelevant consideration when considering whether driving was dangerous: to take it into account would be inconsistent with the objective test of the competent and careful driver. R v Bannister [2009]EWCA Crim 1571.

Causing death by dangerous driving p 610

The element of causation in this offence was examined in a recent case where the accused drove a truck with a sofa wedged in its load area and not tied down. The accused later claimed that he had thought that the sofa was secure and had watched it carefully. There was evidence from a following driver that it should have been obvious to the accused that the sofa was working loose. The accused was driving along a dual carriageway, the sofa fell from the truck and landed on the inside lane. He parked the truck, with its nearside wheels off the carriageway, and tried to retrieve the sofa. A motorcyclist came upon the sofa. He managed to avoid it but failed to see the truck in time. He drove into it and was fatally injured. At his trial for causing death by dangerous driving, the accused submitted that there was no case to answer on the basis that the prosecution had not established either that the vehicle was in a dangerous condition because of its load or that his driving had been a cause of the motorcyclist’s death since the motorcyclist had not been looking where he was going. The Court of Appeal held that the judge had been correct to reject this submission. It held as follows.(1) The jury had been entitled to find that the accused put other drivers at risk by driving dangerously and that such driving played more than a minimal (ie trifling) role in bringing about the motorcyclist’s death. (2) The distinction between dangerous driving which created the circumstances of a fatal collision and dangerous driving which was the actual cause of a death might not be an easy concept to grasp. However, in the instant case, the stark issue was whether or not the cause of the motorcyclist’s death was his own driving and that issue was left squarely to the jury. The judge’s direction that, if the jury found that the accused drove dangerously with an insecure load, it should consider whether that was a cause of the motorcyclist’s death which was more than just trivial specifically addressed the point. [R v Barnes [2008] EWCA Crim 2726; [2009] RTR 262]

Evidence produced by prescribed devices p 625

In relation to the first paragraph, note that the fact that a device is not properly used, in particular that a pre-operative test has not been performed, does not mean that the device is not an approved device. This was held by a divisional court in R (on the application of Bray) v Bristol Crown Court [2009] EWHC 3018 (Admin). The court went to uphold a conviction for speeding where the expert evidence indicated that the failure properly to calibrate a laser speed device did not give rise to any material error. It noted that the speed indicated by the device was only secondary evidence with the primary evidence being the operator's evidence of the speed at which the accused was speeding.