Section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 (dangerous driving) requires that the accused drove far below the standard of a competent and careful driver. Brief, or momentary, inattention will not normally merit a dangerous driving charge. Instead, careless driving would be the appropriate charge.
On meeting our client, and reviewing the evidence in this case, it was obvious to us that a charge under section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 was wholly inappropriate. It was not in dispute that our client was involved in a single vehicle crash on the A74(M) motorway. The police initially suspected our client had fallen asleep but there was no evidence of that.
What happened was that our client briefly lost concentration on a bend on the motorway causing her offside wheels to enter the grass verge. In turn this caused their car to spin and crash.
The basis of the dangerous driving charge – in the absence of any evidence that our client had fallen asleep – was a 28-metre furrow on the grass verge which the police alleged was evidence of prolonged inattention. Leaving aside the issue that even prolonged inattention does not necessarily equate to section 2 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, the length of the furrow in our opinion proved that the inattention was momentary. At motorway speeds, such a furrow would be created in around 1 second.
We entered into negotiations with the Procurator Fiscal. The Fiscal thereafter agreed that a reduction to a charge of careless driving was appropriate. We then attended court with our client and tendered a plea. The court agreed that, although there was a serious crash, this was ultimately a mid-level careless driving charge and dealt with the case by the imposition of penalty points. From where we started out, this was not only an excellent outcome – it was the correct one.
Case defended by Steven Farmer at Dumfries Sheriff Court, 24 October 2023