Our client faced a Fort William dangerous driving prosecution based on the evidence of a single police officer and accompanying dashcam footage.
Dangerous driving is a very serious offence. It is an arrestable offence and can carry a custodial sentence. It is not, therefore, an allegation that should be made lightly. In fact we would say it is a gross misuse of police powers to make such an allegation without any supporting evidence. In our opinion, this Fort William dangerous driving prosecution was one such misuse.
What makes things even worse is that, because the lesser alternative of careless driving exists, people who have done nothing wrong could feel pressurised into accepting a plea deal to that lesser charge.
In this case, the basis of the charge was a supposedly dangerous overtaking maneouvre on a motor home on the approach to a “blind” bend. We obtained the dashcam footage. While our client did overtake a motor home, it was clear that she did so (a) within – well within – the speed limit; (b) where the road markings allowed overtaking and in the absence of oncoming traffic: (c) on a bend that was categorically NOT blind.
When our client began the maneouvre, they believed they could complete it before the bend. When it was clear that was not possible, they could nevertheless see clearly that nothing was coming and therefore completed the overtake.
What then happened was the police officer had only considered his OWN view, not the extended view that was available to a driver in the other lane. Nor did he bother to carry out any investigation to establish what that view would be. But we did and we presented our findings to the Fiscal. Initially the Fiscal was not prepared to drop the case but did offer a plea to careless driving. That is often an excellent outcome in a dangerous driving case but here we could not recommend it to our client but had to advise that any trial was a risk, no matter our view of the evidence.
To our client’s credit, they stuck to their guns and refused the Fiscal’s offer.
At the eleventh hour (the day before the trial), another Fiscal reviewed the evidence and called us to confirm no further action would be taken.
Case defended by Steven Farmer, Fort William Sheriff Court, 11 August 2023