Motoring Discussion > Never stop for ducklings Miscellaneous
Thread Author: Crankcase Replies: 23
View Threaded 

New Sun 22 Jun 14 11:56 
 Never stop for ducklings - Crankcase
Tragic for everyone. How does possible life inside help here? I imagine there will be appeals and so on.

Telegraph.

tinyurl.com/mluq2ev
Last edited by: Crankcase on Sun 22 Jun 14 at 11:57
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Sun 22 Jun 14 12:27 
 Never stop for ducklings - Tigger
... or at least don't stop in the outside lane of a motorway to do it!!!!
Reply to this message | Report message
      1  
New Sun 22 Jun 14 12:30 
 Never stop for ducklings - Bill Payer
I note it says she stopped in the left lane. Bearing in mind they drive on the right I'm wondering if she effectively stopped in lane 2 or 3 of a dual or triple carriageway?

The jury verdict was unanimous so they must have felt she did something very stupid.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Sun 22 Jun 14 12:50 
 Never stop for ducklings - swiss tony
>> Tragic for everyone. How does possible life inside help here? I imagine there will be appeals and so on.

It doesn't help her.
It also doesn't help the family of the deceased.

What it will hopefully do, is make other people think before they do the same thing.
Thus preventing a similar tragedy.

I can't see her spending life in prison, maybe a few years.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Sun 22 Jun 14 15:38 
 Never stop for ducklings - henry k
The Crown said in its opening statement that Czornobaj wasn't physically in her car and that the vehicle was stopped, with the engine running and without any emergency lights, in the left lane of Highway 30, south of Montreal.

the accused was on a narrow shoulder patch next to the passing lane, tending to a family of ducks on the roadway.

Andre Roy, 50, and his daughter Jessie, 16, were killed when Roy’s Harley-Davidson chopper slammed into the rear of Czornobaj's Honda Civic on June 27, 2010

Volikakis was driving another motorcycle behind her husband when the collision happened. She was driving more slowly and managed to avoid injury.
A provincial police officer testified at the trial that Roy, whose speed was estimated at 113 km/h and 129 km/h when he applied his brakes, collided with Czornobaj’s car at between 105 km/h and 121 km/h.

www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-motorist-accused-in-two-deaths-said-she-was-helping-ducks-1.2663840

Before the verdict...
www.princegeorgecitizen.com/news/national/fatal-accident-after-quebec-woman-stopped-for-ducks-not-criminal-defence-lawyer-1.1125518

Strange jury ???
plus photos of the vehicles. A lot of damage from a bike.
globalnews.ca/news/1405321/jury-reaches-impasse-in-quebec-stopping-for-ducks-dangerous-driving-trial/
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Sun 22 Jun 14 16:13 
 Never stop for ducklings - Avant
She may have been thoughtless and deserve a driving ban, but I totally agree with Crankcase's point: why put her in prison? Hopefully the judge will see sense here.

Prisons are overcrowded, I suspect in many countries, because some of the inmates shouldn't be there. Fraudsters, for example, should be heavily fined and stripped of their ill-gotten gains (or bankrupted if they've spent them); dangerous drivers should be at risk of a lifetime driving ban. These would be more of a deterrent than prison.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Sun 22 Jun 14 16:53 
 Never stop for ducklings - Robin O'Reliant
Prison is for the dangerous and the persistent, not for the foolish. There are far more effective ways of making this lady atone for her sins, a community order which ensures she puts something back for example.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Sun 22 Jun 14 17:38 
 Never stop for ducklings - No FM2R
"She testified that Roy gestured to the accused as if to warn her it was dangerous for her to be there. Seconds later, his bike slammed into the stationary car, sending both of the occupants in the motorcycle flying."

Showing the perils of taking your focus off the road in front. You might not be doing anything dumb, but someone else might be.

Clearly she was wrong, ridiculous even, but difficult to see how up to 14 yrs in jail is appropriate.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Sun 22 Jun 14 17:44 
 Never stop for ducklings - Armel Coussine
Not prison perhaps, but definitely boot camp or an asylum for someone who thinks a few ducklings justify playing ducks and drakes with human life in the outside lane of a freeway. Naturally one doesn't want to run over anything, but I'd run over hundreds of ducklings rather than get a dent in my car, let alone kill a biker.

Transatlantic women can be vacuous and sentimental beyond belief. People like that should be escorted by a warder wherever they go, and locked in the house when there's no escort available. .
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Mon 23 Jun 14 07:24 
 Never stop for ducklings - Tigger
THe problem with jail for motoring offences is that most countries (ours included) don't have sufficient training and discipline systems in places to prevent gradual deterioration in driving behaviour.

How many people do we see on their mobile phones day to day? How many not paying attention to the road ahead? Tailgating? Most are lucky and avoid a major incident, but if they are unlucky, and someone dies they too could face jail.

We let someone pass a test at 17 and never have to do a day's further training in their life. Instead we should be insisting on some form of top-up training every few years to catch bad habits and educate people.

How often do we hear that people found their speed awareness courses helpful. A modified version should be a mandatory every 5 years.

And before someone pipes up about the cost of running such a course, what is the cost of all the minor and major prangs which happen as a result of bad driving habits? If we could reduce those by just 5% wouldn't it be worth it?

THe only alternative is a continuing of our current dumbing down of the system - with lower and lower speed limits - eventually enforced by black boxes in our cars.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Mon 23 Jun 14 07:27 
 Never stop for ducklings - Crankcase
I suspect that within a not impossible time frame the question will be moot, as most cars will either conform to speed limits themselves with auto crash avoidance, or just drive themselves completely. Half of that tech is available now, the other half almost.

Ten years perhaps.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Mon 23 Jun 14 07:41 
 Never stop for ducklings - Manatee
You're right Tigger but it won't happen.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Mon 23 Jun 14 10:01 
 Never stop for ducklings - Gromit
Rather, it won't happen until some bright spark figures out how to tie retraining to reissuing our driving licences, so they can charge us for the training course before they charge us for a new licence!
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Mon 23 Jun 14 10:23 
 Never stop for ducklings - henry k
>>We let someone pass a test at 17 and never have to do a day's further training in their life. >>Instead we should be insisting on some form of top-up training every few years to catch bad habits and educate people.
>>

You mean someone like me ?
Back in the 1960s I had no access to a car from friends or family.
I decided that having a driving licence was a good idea but had no plans to own a car.
I had 13 hours in a driving school car before passing my test ( at the second try)
A year later I next drove a car, a hire car followed no driving for a couple of years before buying my first car.
Overall not a good situation.
I learned to drive ( honed my limited skills) on holiday in Cyprus using a very old car over many miles.

The driving test and traffic/ road conditions are much more difficult now.
Many seem to only learn to go faster and retain just " bonnet vision" and not see what is happening down the road.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 10:58 
 Never stop for ducklings - Shiny
I agree with the Canadian jury and prison for manslaughter.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 11:32 
 Never stop for ducklings - Bromptonaut
The media's use of the word 'faces' in context like this amuses me greatly.

If I'm 'facing the sack' at work then to me that implies a real and immediate prospect. Either I'm warned of redundancy or in disciplinary scenario where dismissal is the likely penalty. I would not be facing the sack for some minor infraction like lateness or rowing with a colleague even if such a penalty were theoretically available for persistent/gross offences of same nature.

Media however use the word for something that's an outside/remote possibility - an epidemic or something that maybe, just maybe a consequence of perverse interpretation of the law or a highly fact specific one off judgement

The driver who stopped for ducks will be at lower end of sentence options for what in UK would be manslaughter. She's currently bailed for reports and I'd expect sentence to be at lower end of range - she may even escape custody altogether. Life for manslaughter is reserved to those cases on fringe of murder, not tragic accidents resulting from culpable stupidity.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Thu 26 Jun 14 at 11:34
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 11:59 
 Never stop for ducklings - Mapmaker
>>not tragic accidents resulting from culpable stupidity.


It was not an accident. It was the almost inevitable result of extreme stupidity. A bit like the driver who stopped on a country road to read a map, was hit by another car and went to jail; anybody else remember, a couple of years ago?


Sadly google haven't done streetview for the A30 motorway.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 14:18 
 Never stop for ducklings - WillDeBeest
Of course it was an accident, just an avoidable one for which one party was demonstrably responsible. She didn't mean anyone to die - that would have made it murder - but she did fail to see what the law's reasonable person would have seen, that her action was likely to bring about a serious mishap. That's my layman's understanding of manslaughter - a culpable action or omission that causes an unintended death.

We do hear the phrase 'it was an accident' used as if an accident were some act of the theists' capricious god, for which no mere human should have to take responsibility. Wrong; with rare exceptions, it's people that cause accidents.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 15:37 
 Never stop for ducklings - Westpig
>> The driver who stopped for ducks will be at lower end of sentence options for
>> what in UK would be manslaughter. She's currently bailed for reports and I'd expect sentence
>> to be at lower end of range - she may even escape custody altogether. Life
>> for manslaughter is reserved to those cases on fringe of murder, not tragic accidents resulting
>> from culpable stupidity.
>>

Very well put B
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 15:56 
 Never stop for ducklings - Armel Coussine
>> Very well put B

Yes. But the question remains: what is to be done to keep well-meaning, innocent, vacuous, dangerous idiots from driving cars?

One would expect a proper driving and theory test to weed them out. If only the shrinks could get it together - but they can't apparently - the psychological screening I have recommended in the past could accompany the driving test. Trouble is, it's anathema to public opinion to identify a vacuous idiot as a vacuous idiot. The whole thing is treated as a hot potato.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 16:01 
 Never stop for ducklings - No FM2R
The problem is that they are usually only vacuous and dangerous when they are not paying attention and not thinking the action through.

On a driving test one is paying attention (usually).

I cannot think of a way that a test when the subject is paying attention can detect or defend against an ability to be a dumbass when not paying attention.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 16:11 
 Never stop for ducklings - Armel Coussine
>> I cannot think of a way that a test when the subject is paying attention can detect or defend against an ability to be a dumbass when not paying attention.

Not that difficult. One approach would be to load the respondent with several hurried simultaneous tasks and try to measure how he/she dealt with the question of priority. It isn't difficult to induce a sense of panic even in a test situation.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 19:24 
 Never stop for ducklings - Runfer D'Hills
I was going to say she must be quackers, but then I thought no, duck it.
Reply to this message | Report message
       
New Thu 26 Jun 14 21:48 
 Never stop for ducklings - Shiny
I seem to recall the law in the UK was clarified/ammended after the Herald d' Free Enterprise ferry disaster. While the managers would never have expected people to die in a sinking. I think stopping in the outside lane with no hazards and for no good reason disgracefully negligent behaviour.
Last edited by: Shiny Tailpipes on Thu 26 Jun 14 at 21:49
Reply to this message | Report message
       
Latest Forum Posts