tonytaylor

"The sentence sends out the message to road users that driving in this way is unacceptable and this level of punishment should be expected."

says everything about justice in what is rapidly becoming a neo fascist state. Since when did sentance be decided so as to make an example and not on the merits of the crime.
It would appear the motorcyclist bears the far larger part of the responsibility for his accident.

tafkai

i dont know , but maybe 5 years is the max , and the judge was saying that by giving the max sentences , people would see it as an example of what will happen to you ?
like when a murderer gets "life" , but hes out in 10 years ??

when i read the first report , i got a vision of the biker overtaking , the gt2 owner making it into a race ........ resulting in the biker going to fast and losing control . bikers fault .
when i read the second report , i got a vision of the biker trying to overtake , the gt2 driver accelerating so he couldnt , and him hitting on-coming . gt2's fault .

either way , they both have brakes !!!!!! seems like the both had more power than sense

Johnny G Pipe

My thoughts exactly. Just goes to show that the media (and lawyers ) can take the truth and make anything they want out of it..

Christer

Personally if I had no direct involvement in anything that happened to the person racing with me then I wouldn't kill myself over it. I certainly don't expect any sympathy from anyone else if I screw up and get hurt.

In this case the motorcyclist has to take the responsbility for hitting a truck head on. When I overtake someone and they speed up either because they haven't seen me or that they want to race then my main concern is what is coming the other way. I have brakes I can use them, I am the one on the wrong side of the road after all. The motorcyclist in this case must be at fault. I would be gutted if I was the GT2 driver and got jailed for 5 years just because the motorcyclist was stupid and drove badly. Its right up there with what happened to that farmer Martin who shot the burglar. By all means ban the GT2 driver if it was proven that he was driving recklessly. Don't punish him for someone else's stupidity.

DaveK

I agree completely. I am irresponsible and I would happily race a GT2 on my bike. However, as Christer said - I would also be paying attention to what was coming the other way and I would not be spending a prolonged amount of time on the wrong side of the road.

I can't see how it can be anyones fault but the biker.

Jamie Summers

Can't remember where, but I was reading about this story yesterday and from what I recall there is allegedly some doubt as to the identity of the car and driver.

The gist of it is that the guy who is doing 'time' owns a black GT2 and is known to be a generally sane and sensible, mild mannered kind of guy. An initial witnessto the accident claimed the car was blue, not black. The guy whose testimony the conviction seems to rest on claims he recognised the driver through the half open 'tinted window', the car in question does not have tinted windows. This witness, it turns out, is a good friend of the biker - and the witness who claimed to have seen a blue car has gone awol. All highly suspect. The only reason that this guy has ended up in court at all is that he was unable to account for his whereabouts at the time of the accident, and 'may' have been in his car at the time.
Anyway, this is all mere rumour, and you would like to hope that the courts have access to rather more information on the case. That said it would be a travesty for an innocent man to go to jail purely because he happened to have a similar car.

Jamie

Adrian

Nobody who drives around in a GT-2 is sane nor mild mannered
A GT-2 will bite the bum of the mild-mannered and you have to insane to use it.
Ciao,
Adrian

tonytaylor

but I think the witness giving the number plate gave the game away.

johnfm

Awful lot of opinions here from people who aren't remotely aware of the facts of the case. From a strictly legal point of view, given that the burden of proof is on the prosecution, I expect there may have been some relatively compelling evidence - the CPS aren't in the habit of taking cases to court unless they have a reasonably strong case. Suggesting that a now dead cyclist was stupid without the merest hint of knowledge of the facts of the case could be misconstrued as insensitive - however, I know that Christer is probably the most sensitive rennlister among us......