No Justice

When I first moved to SA back in 82, in the papers, there was a man who killed a family of 4 through drunk driving and got a R200 fine(got off on a technicallity and something about not possessing a sound mind at the time ..... in the same paper a few pages on a man got fined R1000 for fishing in the wrong place(he was in possesion of a fishing permit too) I will never forget that day....I have never seen the system in the same light.... I was 8 at the time but I think it was the first real lesson in the worlds not a fair or just place!

i have heard he will be out in a year,3 was bad enough but a year!
it really is a joke.
god bless all the family involved .

Please don't get me wrong here with what I'm about to say I have the utmost sympathy with the relatives of the family that got killed.

What hapened was a horrible thing - a family was wiped out in a split second.The surviving relatives will never get over what happened and will never feel as if justice has been done.Even if the sentence had been 20 years it won't bring back the dead.

That lorry driver has to live with what happened for the rest of his life.He did not leave Spain to come to the UK to kill 6 people he was here to deliver a load of Orange Juice to one of the supermarket chains .

Below is a cut and paste from the BBC News website because it says it better than I can -

Supt Guy Hindle, from Cheshire Police, said: "This tragedy is not about foreign lorry drivers on British roads. It is about a dreadful crash that wiped out a generation of one family and was due to one driver's gross inattention.

"One driver's failure to recognise his responsibility to others; one driver's failure to see the potential magnitude of his actions when in control of an HGV; one driver's simple failure to pay attention."

Supt Hindle was asked what lessons could be learned from the tragedy.

He replied: "[For] Anybody who drives on the roads, let alone a motorway, the lessons learned from this is inattention can be fatal, magnified by driving a vehicle of that nature.

"We can all pay more attention when we drive."


If we all take that advice on board - leave more time for our journeys , and be more carefull and considerate on the roads then maybe this won't happen as often .

If we cannot forgive the errors of others our lives are wasted. This was not a murder it was a tragic accident.

whereas i have every sympathay for a driver that is involved in an accident not of their own making, i cannot and do not understand the sentences involved in those caused by any driver not attending?

to me a vehicle driven, is like a gun, you are loaded ,and it is your responsibility, if you shoot someone it is at the very least manslaughter, if you drive and screw up, it is NOT careless.
i do not doubt that that is not a scenario that many people accept, but to me a car/lorry/bus etc should be considered a 'lethal' weapon, you get behind a wheel and you have a real responsibilty, and you should be punished if you screw up.

Correct - I have at a rough guess one and a half milion miles accident free under my belt in an HGV.Thats something I'm proud of but neither was it easy.I hope and pray I'm never in an accident and take all the precautions that I can.
Mistakes can and do happen a quick look at the phone to see the latest text message, putting a new address into the sat nav, opening a bottle of mineral , dropping the ciggy lighter , fishing round for a box of fags, trying to eat a sandwich/Mars bar/packet of crisps on the way to somewhere, changing the CD/radio station - who can honestly say they haven't done it .

A fully loaded truck can weigh in at 44 tons plus and that gap we leave in front of us is for a reason - to give us time to react -it's not for people to pull into .We need a hell of a lot of room and I don't think everybody realises that.
We can all be better drivers - all I say is lets all be better drivers.

please i have not read the thread, lived in the same town (llanduddno) an my children knew the eldest child an the dad with the family dog. i am so disgusted , they moved from bvirmingham 4 a better life 4 what? this is very rore x Belle

one of my sons at the time said "at least they all went together not one lived to see all the others dead" he was 12 at the time an went to school with Reece. big words for a little boy x Belle

I am with beefy on this one, the lorry driver made a mistake.
I sometimes watch cops with cameras types of program, and there is always male drivers in police car chases where they deliberately takes dangerous risks.
They cost the police thousands in damage and police hours by use of many officers and sometimes the police helicopter.
And they too get off very lightly, but they drive dangerously deliberately !!!

FG

As a driver for over thirty years, I have been lucky enough to have only one accident and I skidded on wet leaves on a narrow country lane and hit a lorry head on, I only had whip lash. I never use my phone, eat, drink, put make up on and I dont smoke anyway. All these things should be banned when driving. The number of people who continue to use their phone when driving beggers belief. Not enough is done when someone breaks the law to catch the culprits weather its speeding or something else.
My sympathies are with the families, the driver took his eyes off the road. The punishment should fit the crime.

Totally agree with both!Where my sympathies obviously are with the families of the family left dead,this driver didn't set out to kill.Although his official sentence may seem short,I'm sure that the one he serves in his mind will last for the rest of his life!
I'm sure most of us that drive have done something that could be classed as inattentive driving.It should serve as a lesson to us all to take more care....but to catergorize a driver that maybe took his mind off the road for a split second as a murderer???If he'd been drinking or was being deliberately stupid/dangerous I would feel differently.

Does anyone know about the talk of him using a laptop? It may be media spin, but if this was true, then it was unforgiveable. There is inattention for a split second and there is outright recklessness and disregard for others' safety and lives. If I know that me texting whilst driving can result in the loss of life and I choose to do it regardless, then I have made a conscious decision to disregard the consequences of my actions. The latter would not be rectified by any sentence, but the families of the victims are quite justified in seeing this as an insult, if the above were the case. Sentence does not have to involve time in prison and I think more could have been done.

Of course, the laptop thing could well be 'rumour' and hype. I don't think, though, that highlighting the fact we all do silly things whilst driving makes it any less dangerous, or any less selfish. If we choose to do them, then we must accept severe consequences.

I sympathise with you on the gap issue, Beefy. It's bad enough in a car, but I also drive lorries and I sometimes think that everyone should be made to drive one on the open road, if only to make people realise who much slower these vehicles are to react!

I believe the laptop user and the Portuguese driver are two seperate people.

Just checked the story on the BBC website and they are the same person, but it does make it clear that the laptop is just speculation. In any case, it was an awful tragedy, however you look at it.