A satnav was partly to blame for a crash which killed a father, a judge said yesterday.Then the judge is a complete moron.
Because, far from being one of those cases where an idiot blindly follows the sat-nav instructions down a too-narrow lane, or across a bridge that no longer exists, this crash was caused by dangerous overtaking...
Isn't it about time we stopped allowing people to blame anything and everything for their own failings?
Kadas-Tar, 33, a Hungarian working in Britain as a hospital porter, was driving home at 5am after seeing his girlfriend while Mr Summers, of Keighley, West Yorkshire, was on his way to work at the Silentnight factory in Barnoldswick, Lancashire.My brand of sat-nav doesn't give me overtaking instructions. I'm willing to bet this one, whatever it is, doesn't either:
Mr Summers was on the correct side of the road and travelling at a safe speed when Kadas-Tar's Ford Mondeo veered on to the wrong side to pass a lorry and smashed into him. Mr Summers died in hospital four hours later, Bradford Crown Court heard.
The judge said driver Roland Kadas-Tar had placed too much faith in the satnav map of the road ahead near Broughton, North Yorkshire, when making the manoeuvre which was 'fraught with danger'.The defence brief must have been spitting feathers he was pipped to the post with that load of hogwash.
'You paid insufficient attention to the reality of the road ahead of you,' said Judge Jonathan Rose.
'The road was curved, dim and the weather was appalling.'
He added: 'Your reliance on the satellite navigation system and its effect on your thinking was a contributing factor.'
Isn't it about time we stopped allowing people to blame anything and everything for their own failings?
15 comments:
Christ Almighty, that is terrifying.
It's an offence to use a mobile phone when driving (rightly or wrongly), so why did the judge consider focusing all your attention on a sat nav to be a mitigating factor and not an aggravating factor?
Why is 'relying on a sat nav' that much different to having a mobile phone clamped to your ear with somebody giving you directions?
Yet another East European who probably took what they laughingly call a driving test, in a horse-drawn Trabant ..
All those stories of sat navs giving wrong directions seems highly suspicious to me. I suspect it was wrong interpretation or an easy excuse to avoid blame in most cases.
I find the view of the 'road ahead' on a satnav quite useful if I am unfamiliar roads, but I wouldn't be daft enough to take a clear line on a screen to mean 'road clear'. That's just stupid, and the judge should have made that clear.
We are getting to a point where people will be able to do exactly as they please at all times, and when things go wrong the challenge will be to find enough mitigating factors to get you off scot-free. These would be, in order of importance, points in the hand of victimhood poker, whether an employer can be found to take some or all of the blame, and whether a product or piece of technology can be found which lacked a specific warning against the event which occurred. Thus:
I am a Zoroastrian, therefore it is not my fault.
I am an employee, therefore it is not my fault.
There was nothing on the welder to warn me against tacking my foreskin to my eyelids, therefore it is not my fault.
Simple.
"Isn't it about time we stopped allowing people to blame anything and everything for their own failings?"
Why would we do that? Works, doesn't it?
@ Brian ..
Absolutely, the system keeps thousands who would be otherwise unemployable in work ..
His satnav may have been showing him a road in Budapest, so naturally confusing.
Let us hope too he has a safe journey home to Hungary and never returns to these shores. Oh, and his girlfriend can go with him if she likes. or does that infringe various human rights?
Your view on his rights, Mr Summers? Speak up!
What a pile of steaming horseshit.
Unless he'd started the job that same day and hooked up with his girlfriend on the same day (place your bets) , why would he even need the satnav switched on for a route he'd driven previously ?!?!?
Unbelievable.
"Against tacking my foreskin to my eyelids"
Come on, Richard - that looks like a thinly veiled boast to me. Or else you've got very droopy eyelids...
Or a very flexible spine ...
I think it's time to go back to the ultimate freedom. The freedom to take the consequences of your actions.
Four and a half years for taking a life under circumstances that clearly were not an accident is far too short.
Sodoffski raises an important point. If deporting some low-life immigrant criminal infringes their right to a 'family life' with their feral kids/babymother why not deport the whole family? Then they get the right to a family life in the fly-blown hell-hole they came from. Simples.
"Christ Almighty, that is terrifying."
But given out judiciary, not surprising?
"Yet another East European..."
Hurrah for free movement within the EU, eh?
"...or an easy excuse to avoid blame in most cases."
Well, it seems to work!
"We are getting to a point where people will be able to do exactly as they please at all times, and when things go wrong the challenge will be to find enough mitigating factors to get you off scot-free. "
Getting to it? I think you'll find we have, as the say-navs say, reached our destination... ;)
"What a pile of steaming horseshit."
Something I find myself thinking about a lot of court cases!
"If deporting some low-life immigrant criminal infringes their right to a 'family life' with their feral kids/babymother why not deport the whole family? "
I like that idea..!
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