Common sense that says the law’s an ass

There are times when normal commonsense reacts to something that has occurred and delivers a judgement that is hard to gainsay.

Such was the reaction by the man in the street at the judgement last week in the case of a young mother who lost her life on the Birguma Bypass very early in the morning. One has only to skim through the comments on the comment spaces of this and other online news portals to see what people thought about the judgement.

At 5.30am on 9 July, 2010, a young mother was taking her baby to her mother before going off to work. The baby was strapped carefully (and luckily) on the back seat.

Going up the Birguma Bypass, just past the t’Alla w Ommu hill, the mother’s car was hit by an oncoming car, driving at the reckless speed of 105km/hr, which skidded and flipped on its

Editor’s pick

side and slammed into the young mother’s car, killing her instantly. The baby, securely strapped in the back seat, was not hurt. Now the young man whose reckless driving caused this got off with an €80 fine, 350 hours of community service and a licence suspension for three months.

All the comments on the portals agreed this was a super-lite sentence which is an offence to the dead mother’s memory.

There are things which were not considered in the judgement. This paper had remarked some days after the accident that the spot where the accident took place is badly structured.

When the Birguma Bypass was constructed, the camber after the roundabout was done in the opposite direction in which it should have been. Even today, anybody driving down in the direction of Salina can feel the road, as it turns to the left, pushes the car to cross into the oncoming lane and traffic.

When then a young driver, only 18 years old at that time, and with a licence only a few days old, drives down the road at the reckless speed of 105km/hr, and on a road covered with early morning dew, expect a tragedy.

There is nothing to mark the tragedy, unlike other places dotting the Maltese roads.

It would thus be appropriate for the young man to be told to do the community service he was ordered to patrolling the area with a placard saying ‘Drive carefully and slowly: I killed a young mother here’.

Of course, it will not bring the young mother back to life or restore the mother to the baby, but it will at least restore a modicum of proportionality to the case, which a sentence passed after almost seven years fails to do.