It’s a real catch-22. Driving unaccompanied and driving without an NCT is obviously an offence, but typically not one that results in a jail term. To be honest, to me that is the real offence, the tyre-pressure thing is a red herring and you have had lads on here calling for her to be jailed while relating their own stories about blow-outs on motorways and the like and how they have learned from it.
as i said earlier we have no data to prove or disprove the lack of an NCT is a a contributing factor as the reason for not having the NCT wasnt specified , so if it was for a defective brake light its a non runner regarding the root cause of the accident
im not having it with the tyres until i see what the PSI was for each one versus the specified reccomendations
this was reckless driving
a horrendous precedent has been set here
she is responsible for the death of 4 people
she should be locked up
Have you ever committed a road traffic offence and gotten away with it?
I’ve never driven drunk but I’d have overloaded the fiesta a few times as a young fella and probably wouldn’t have been too careful checking for tyre pressure, without knowing all the facts this case gives me a there but for the grace of god feeling, we’ve all fucked up on the roads, she’s hardly a criminal and she lives with this for all her days,
Has there been any commentfrom the dead girls families?
Driving without a licence and a valid NCT is reckless driving, or at least as close to it as you can prove. Losing control of a car is not necessarily reckless driving.
I agree, but if you punch a lad, whatever the reason, and he gets up and wanders off, there is usually no major issue. If he hits his head on the kerb, whilst the act is no different, the result and the legal ramifications are. Such is life really. There’s plenty doing time for things others never gave a second thought due entirely to luck, or lack thereof. Sending the lass to jail is, to an extent pointless, but if it were a donegal lad, I suspect the jury would have contemplated a bit longer, and rightly. It sends a poor message really
She should certainly be prosecuted for the other inarguable offences notwithstanding.
I think it comes down to character. Some people are full of abandon, don’t put much pass on rules, and have a devil may care attitude. Get their first car and fly off in it without L Plates and a valid NCT. They don’t mean harm and it’s not badness, but it’s not right either.
Others are cautious and reserved and can be overly by the book, maybe too much so in some respects. When I was learning to drive in my late teens, twenties, early thirties and mid thirties, I never drove unaccompanied. Firstly because I was a brutal driver but secondly because I was very mindful of that and didn’t want to put myself and/or others at risk.
Yes, that’s the bottom line here. I do have a lot of sympathy for the young girl. She did something that tens of thousands of young people have done, getting behind the wheel as an inexperienced learner driver unaccompanied. That doesn’t make that okay though and when things go wrong there are often consequences. There are obviously no criminal consequences for here as she was acquitted but she’s probably got to deal with a lot worse for the rest of her life.