Or, you know, because she didn’t intend to hit anyone. I know everything is black and white in your world, but that’s not how the real world works. Let’s say we go hunting for deer (in a jurisdiction where this is legal, and while observing all relevant laws). We see a deer. You raise your gun, take aim, ensure there are no humans in the area, and shoot. All intentional conduct.
Unbeknownst to you, the deer is a cardboard cut-out and the bullet passes through and kills the human standing behind it. Was the shooting an accident?
I’m claiming that it’s reasonable to expect that driving on the wrong side of the road will lead to a head on collision. And I don’t believe that anyone actually disagrees with that. She paid insufficient attention to what she was doing, with predictable (and tragic) results.
Or to put it another way, she drove in such a way that she should have expected a collision.
She thought she was on the correct side of the road. She was wrong, but she couldn’t have expected a collision unless she drove on the incorrect side of the road on purpose.
“Some organizations” doesn’t demonstrate anything about the official meaning of the term in UK law. It doesn’t even indicate if these organizations are government or law enforcement organizations. And “some” would also indicate that there are other organizations - arguably more organizations, depending on the denotations of “some” - that do use “accident” to describe this sort of event.
Did the woman expect to hit another car when she went out driving that day? No, she did not. It was an unexpected and unintentional outcome of her inattentiveness.
I don’t mind your pedantry, except in that it’s entirely wrong, as demonstrated by your own cites.
No, he’s saying that for her to realize how dangerous it was for her to drive on the wrong side of the road, she would have had to be cognizant that she was on the wrong side of the road in the first place. If she thought she was on the correct side of the road, she would have no reason to expect to get in a head-on accident. Therefore, the accident was unexpected.
Whether or not you call it an accident doesn’t of itself exculpate someone from responsibility (in English criminal law), nor (of itself) does a lack of intention.
That’s about what I’d figure, at most. We just had a story where an American driver in British Columbia hit a woman and dragged her under the car a few blocks. The police on the scene seemed to think it didn’t warrant charges and he was free to leave the country - no diplomatic immunity required.
Video has emerged suggesting the woman was stepping over the trailer hitch when the driver put the car in gear and drove off. If so, he may not even have known about the woman until he came to a stop some blocks later.
Are you making the case for a specific offense? Or are you just saying she has moral culpability, and should have been paying closer attention/taken greater care regarding the possibility of making this error?
Specific offenses have mental state requirements, and link the mental state to something specific. Without knowing the particular offense, it’s hard to discuss what mental state would lead to criminal liability.
You’re a funny, funny guy. I assume the basis was “we’re deciding whether to charge him” camouflaged with “we really need you to come down to the station for sone questions”.
The mental state would be recklessness or negligence, and the offence one involving either reckless or dangerous driving.
Dangerous driving does not require that the intent be to drive dangerously, just that a competent and careful driver would know that it was dangerous. I would argue that any competent and careful driver would know which side of the road to drive on, and that it is extremely dangerous to drive on the other.
In short, being careless about which side of the road you drive on is very much illegal, and I would say that the several people here who’ve said how easy it is should reflect on how much care they take when driving.
perhaps I misunderstood you. But if the police have released him without charges, they have no power to tell him he can’t leave the area.
Or were you meaning when they initially contacted him at the scene of the accident? But even then, absent an arrest, they have no power to compel him to come to the police station for questioning.