Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Slap on the wrist for nearly killing two motorcyclists


I'm hopping mad and downright disgusted and outraged.

Why? Because the traffic and court system is broken here in our country.

I've been following a story for 18 months now where a women crashed into two motorcyclists hospitalizing both of them. See the dash cam video below to see what happened.



So she has finally been to court and what happened? Sweet F*ck all is what happened.
She received a $1000 fine, a one month driving suspension and no driving conviction recorded.

WHY?

This is basically the equivalent of a slap on the wrist. The female driver was clearly in the wrong failing to give way to traffic. With the recent blow up in the media about the amount of deaths on the roads in 2017 and we see this and the driver basically gets nothing. She almost killed two innocent riders and got away with it.

Riders Steve Caruana, 43, suffered a broken pelvis and lost his left testicle(OMG) while riding partner Marc Logan, 38, a broken right leg, left foot and right hand.

Steve has lost his job and cannot work in the construction industry due to his injuries and says the fine is “absolute bullshit”. “I’ve copped more from speeding fines and didn’t endanger anyone’s life,” he says.

Following on from from my recent articles about licensing, speed limits and speeding fines in this country you can read about here and here. He is absolutely right too, Vicpol are more interested in hiding in the bushes trying to nab drivers doing less than 10km over the limit than actually doing something about people that drive like this women and put people in hospitals. You lose your license here for one month and a huge fine for just doing 25kmh over the speed limit on a remote country road with no one around, and I might add without hurting anyone, which makes the fine in this case an absolute joke.

Our court system really is broken if this is all you get for nearly killing two other motorists.





16 comments:

  1. Peter Berndt (yo_papeee)
    We had a conversation about exactly this at work the other day. The state government and the opposition here in Qld are having a battle over covert speed cameras. The government has a budget for speed camera fines of 489 million dollars, don't quote me on that figure. But the fact they have budgeted an amount required for the financial year is a worry for me. The opposition has said they will get rid of covert speed cameras. That alone for me is not enough. What else will they do to help curb the road toll. And the powers that be start to be honest about what is causing accidents and deaths.
    And as the road toll does not seem to be dropping, pretty soon the argument that speeding as the major cause of accidents is going to be an argument that the facts are not going to back up.
    Agreed that the punishments are way off balance for the crimes. Get some more cars on the road, catch people doing illegal and dangerous shit. Pull them over and write them a ticket. Make a presence known on the road.
    She is very lucky these guys weren't killed. But there lives have been changed forever. But I don't need to tell you that.

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  2. Unfortunately, this type of story is becoming all too common. I thought that it was just around here. Sad to hear that it's a worldwide problem (a couple of data points is sufficient to expand to global, right?)

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    Replies
    1. Yes Richard I've seen similar posts from US dash cams and it is far too common occurrence.

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  3. It really is a travesty. They will have to sue her civilly to try and hit her in the pocketbook where the criminal justice system fails. That is what occurs here in Oregon too. Unless you kill a motorcyclist you get a ticket no worse than speeding. Unless you were drunk at the time then it is more severe.

    If they run a red light or stop sign they just get a "failing to obey a traffic control device" Or "failure to maintain lane" when they cross the centerline and nail a motorcyclist. Both violation and under $400 fine.

    Sad really.

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  4. Maybe the drivers that left the intersection open for that idiot to get across the road are partly to blame as well? They encouraged her to cross the intersection despite the fact that she had to give way to her right.

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    Replies
    1. That's something I noticed too Dave and I see it happen around here too (I'm sometimes considerate enough to let people in) but the driver still needs to check that the road is clear in both directions.

      Pathetic outcome from the courts though.

      BTW: Steve, the cops are really getting on speed kills bandwagon here at the moment. And of course bikers are still the only group in NZ that are singled out (mustn't upset the cyclists and rugby players) and made to pay extra ACC on their rego. Cars rego costs goes down with safety features and age (new is good, but then so is really, really old) etc. I paid $77 for my cars rego (12 months) but it's $585 for each of my bikes regardless of safety features - both have ABS and one has TC.

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    2. Yes they did, but isn't there a rule you shouldn't block intersections so that emergency services vehicles can still get through. If they had of blocked it these two riders would have got home safe and sound.

      Andrew NZ cops taking the Aussie attitude that speed kills and they will make a lot of money out of it, unfortunately it wont reduce the road toll for them.
      There should be a rule if you can only ride one bike at a time then there is only one rego fee.

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  5. Disgusting... And the perception--the assumption--persists that in any accident involving a motorcyclist, the rider must have somehow been at fault. What do we do?...

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    Replies
    1. That is right, I've heard people saying that it was these guys fault because they were speeding. The car was only doing 41kmh in a 60kmh zone, the bikes were clearly doing the speed limit. They could have used the left land to try and minimize their risk but hindsight is a great thing. Road craft would really help a lot of riders.

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  6. Can the matter be appealed Steve or does that require money, speaking of which were the riders compensated?

    Unfortunately the matter probably was coloured by it being motorcycles and because Australia has become anti motorcycle thanks to concerted efforts by bureaucrats.

    Lets hope Australia doesn't try follow what France is trying at the mo.

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    Replies
    1. Warren
      One of the guys in the accident hasn't been able to work and is receiving benefits from TAC which is in charge of Victorian accident victims compensation. He said that the compensation was less than half his normal wage and is now struggling to live.
      Pretty shocking all round I would say, with a system like this in place it won't be long before we follow the American path and sue everyone for things like this.

      It was treated in court as a traffic matter and not a civil matter therefore the slap on the wrist. I think they would have to instigate legal proceedings on their own merit.

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