Killer Drivers

BBC Radio 4's Law in Action was be broadcast on Friday, 5 November, 2004 at 1600 GMT.

Over 3,500 people die on Britain's roads each year and many more are seriously injured.

Many of the drivers responsible for deaths on the road are charged only with careless driving - an offence which carries a maximum sentence of a £2,500 fine and a driving ban - rather than the more serious offence of causing death by dangerous driving which is punishable with a maximum of 14 years imprisonment.

The House of Commons Transport Select Committee has said that "the public is rightly outraged at a legal system which considers death or injury as less serious if it has been caused by someone driving a motor vehicle."

At present, the CPS often categorises offences such as driving through a red light and over-taking on the inside lane as merely careless driving. The CPS has promised to review this, however, the select committee has proposed the creation of a new offence of causing death by negligent driving.

Dr Sally Cunningham is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Leicester. She has made a detailed study of how the criminal justice system deals with deaths on the road.

She found that although some cases of causing death by careless driving involve serious violations of the road traffic law, the vast majority of deaths on the road are either not caused by the surviving driver or are caused by relatively minor driver errors which amount to negligent driving rather than wilful violations of the law.

She tells Law in Action that although a review of the law is necessary, she does not think the answer is to mete out serious punishments to those drivers who are merely guilty of negligence - "You've got to the blameworthiness of the defendant rather than just the consequences of the accident."

Dr Cunningham and Gwynneth Dunwoody MP, the Chair of the Transport Select Committee, join Clive Coleman to discuss the issues.