Dangerous drivers still getting off easy
Since I last wrote about the absurdly lenient penalties menacing Ontario’s worst and most dangerous drivers, the courts have actually handed down some reasonably tough sentences.
Kenneth Mitchell, 68, of Niagara Falls, got 18 months in jail and a 10- year driving ban for a road rage- y incident that caused the death of Rie Motomitsu.
Mitchell Irwin, 21, got four years in prison and an additional six- year driving ban for swerving around another car to try to beat a yellow light, crashing into and killing 26- year- old cyclist Adam Excell, fleeing the scene in midtown Toronto, dumping out a case of beer in a school parking lot and beetling off home to Keswick.
Those were Criminal Code charges for dangerous driving — very much the pointy end of the enforcement stick and relatively rare.
The fact is you can do a hell of a lot of damage with a car without meaning to; proving mens rea is a challenge. But even when criminal charges pan out, people are often incredulous at the result.
“If you take someone’s life while driving, I don’t think you should be able to drive,” Excell’s cousin, Ashley Ferguson, told the Toronto Star. “You shouldn’t have that privilege.”
At the other end of the stick, those charged under the provincial Highway Traffic Act continue to face what might be described as stern admonishment.
In May, in Windsor, truck driver Dinesh Kumar rear- ended 19- year- old Nicole Vetor’s car, which was stopped in traffic; she died on the scene. Later that month, in Amherstburg, a 16- year- old kid rolled his car into a field; passenger Nick Dyer didn’t manage to escape before the car caught fire, and he died later in hospital. In June in Hanover, south of Owen Sound, an unidentified 89- year- old man mowed down and killed 83- year- old pedestrian Beatrice Gaeler in the middle of an intersection.
Charged with careless driving, Kumar and the unidentified youth face maximum penalties of two years’ imprisonment, a $2,000 fine and a two- year licence suspension. Charged with failing to yield to a pedestrian, the unidentified pensioner faces a maximum fine of $500.
And the maximum penalty often isn’t doled out. In June, in St. Thomas, 69-yearold Robert Duncan pleaded guilty to careless driving: in October 2015 he ran a stop sign and crashed his pickup into Valerie Hurley’s van, killing her partner, John Tremblett, and their threemonth- old son Carstyn. He got the full two- year driving ban and maximum $ 2,000 fine, but just 12 months’ probation.
This week at Queen’s Park, politicians declared they were getting tough. The Liberals unveiled a suite of new offences and toughened penalties for distracted driving, failing to yield to pedestrians, and impaired driving.
The biggest novelty is the new provincial, non- criminal offence of “careless driving causing death or bodily harm.” And while legal types might not universally appreciate the concept — Highway Traffic Act offences generally concern themselves with actions, not outcomes — it’s hard to imagine it finding any enemies in the legislature.
“This is about penalties that fit the action and behaviour of the accused,” said Tourism Minister Eleanor McMahon, who has lobbied for the new offence since a repeat- offender dangerous driver killed her husband while he was cycling.
“It is my great hope that this will save lives, that it will deter poor driving choices, that it will send the clear signal that possibly paying a moment of inattention has lasting consequences.”
Yeah, maybe. But careless driving causing death would come with a maximum $ 50,000 fine, two years’ imprisonment and a licence suspension of no more than five years.
That’s going to produce the same kind of post-verdict outrage that the current penalties do — indeed, the maximum custodial sentence is the same as for careless driving that doesn’t cause death. Meanwhile, new licence suspensions for distracted driving would top out at 30 days … on a third offence!
What gets me most is what seems to get Ashley Ferguson most, and it’s something no one — including McMahon — has ever managed to explain to me: why on earth are the statutory licence suspensions so brief ?
Even people convicted under the Criminal Code get their licence back after a maximum of 10 years. That’s a long time, don’t get me wrong: it’s so long that people will need to adapt their lives to not driving. So why give it back at all? How can there not even be a provision under the Criminal Code or the Highway Traffic Act to strike these menaces off the rolls forever?
If these get- tough measures encounter any resistance in the legislature, it ought to be on grounds they’re not nearly tough enough.