Thread by @TweetingYet

Another thread on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill.

I am going to skip the section on public order and encampments. Much has already been written about it, ranging from the insightful to the simply wrong. I may come back to it.

Let's look at driving instead.

Clauses 64 and 65 increase the maximum sentences for causing death or serious injury through driving.

Clause 64 first: it's couched in terms of an amendment to a Schedule of another Act, as these things often are, but what it amounts to is this:

The maximum penalty for causing death by dangerous driving increases from 14 years' imprisonment to life. The maximum for causing death by careless driving when under the influence of drink of drugs also increases from 14 years to life.

Then we have clause 65. This creates a new offence of causing serious injury by careless driving. The maximum penalty is 2 years in the Crown Court or 6 months in the Magistrates' Court (until they get their powers increased, at which point it will become 12 months).

As with the provisions I covered yesterday, whether you like these provisions is a matter of taste.

Given the availability of manslaughter charges being brought, I am not entirely convinced of the need for the sentence for causing death by dangerous driving to go up to life

but nor do I particularly object: the kind of case that would attract it likely to be very bad driving indeed, of the kind that frankly could already be charged as manslaughter. This increase does at least offer some clarity to the law and to the offenders' criminal record.

The increase for causing death by careless while under the influence is a little more concerning, since it technically covers somebody who is very slightly over the limit and makes an error of judgment that they would have made had they been entirely sober as well.

In practice, however, that is not likely to be the case. Sentences like this are going to be reserved for instances of extreme intoxication and carelessness falling only a little short of dangerous driving. If somebody chooses to drive a car in that state then that is the risk.

The new offence of causing serious injury by careless driving is part of a trend towards the increasing criminalisation of careless driving. It is something about which we have to be very careful.

Careless driving covers a very wide range of conduct, from driving that is only just short of dangerous to errors of judgment. Every driver is guilty of careless driving at some point. That is a simple fact. You have not checked your blind spot every single time you change lane

or turn left. At some point you have been too close behind the car in front and would have hit it had it stopped suddenly.

Well, if there had been a cyclist coming up your inside that time you didn't check before turning left then you could well be facing this charge, or worse.

It was not that long ago that there was no offence of causing death by careless driving. If your driving was simply careless then that was all you could be convicted of. I have sat with a man who killed a cyclist on a dual carriageway through a momentary lapse.

At the time, his conviction meant that he was banned from driving and fined but that was it. His record just says careless or inconsiderate driving, just as it would had he splashed pedestrians by driving through a deep puddle.

A couple of years later and he would have been convicted of causing death by careless driving. He still wouldn't have gone to prison but it would at least have been an option.

Under this new offence you will be able to go to prison for up to 2 years if your lapse of attention causes somebody a broken jaw.

You won't of course. As with everything else, the top sentence will be reserved for the most serious injuries and driving just short of dangerous.

So there are the changes for drivers. The driving lobby will probably hate it, many on cycling forums will hate it because it doesn't make driving a capital offence (I speak as a cyclist who despairs of some of his fellow roadies sometimes) and the rest of us will be split.