Having read the two selby rail crash threads I was suprised at the number of people defending this mans actions, with such remarks as "We have all done it" and "He was unlucky, in the wrong place at the wrong time" etc. I would like to make the following points:
1) Only an idiot would stay up all night on the internet then set off on a long journey the next day without any sleep. A lot of people who posted said they often went long periods without sleep because of having to work long hours, but Mr Hart was not working, he was talking to some woman he had not even met before!
2) Despite the other contributing circumstances such as the inadequate length of crash barrier the bottom line is if he had got some sleep the night before ten people would still be alive today.
3) Even with all the evidence leading to one conclusion he continued to protest his innocence rather than face up to what he had done, something the judge may well take into account when considering his sentence.
I have no sympathy for this man, and I think he should be given a sentence to deter anyone else taking the same risk he did in future. Three years in my opinion would be a fair ammount (don't forget he would be out on probation after 18 months).
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The trouble is, that unlike drinking when you know that you should not get behind the wheel of a car, how do you actually gauge when you are too tired too drive? No sane person would drive if they knew they were likely to fall asleep at the wheel, but all of us drive many times when we have been awake for a long period and and feel fatigued. Falling asleep at the wheel is a strange sensation because you do not actually realise it is happening to you, till either you crash or luckily as in my case a passenger alerts you.
Featureless roads such as motorways and trunk roads accentuate the problem, as there is nothing physically to occupy the driver for hours at a time, and a modern vehicle is a smooth,warm and cosy environment with nothing to jerk you out of of a doze you may be drifting into.
Think about the process you went through before you fell asleep last night. Do you actually remember the stages of going from alert to unconcious, or did it just happen to you?
Gary Hart made a mistake in driving after being awake for so long, but a mistake is a mistake and not a pre-meditated criminal act. That, I think is the reason why so many of us feel that a prison sentence is inappropriate in this case.
In the light of the rail accidents of recent years, I also suspect that the Establishment are jumping for joy that at last they have found someone they can crucify to satisfy public demands for action and to deflect from there own negligence. Remember, there were no barriers preventing a vehicle from straying onto the railway at the point of the accident. It could just as easily have been a petrol tanker after a tyre blowout.
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If Mr hart had been totally open with the police from the outset and admitted he'd nodded off rather than denying any blame for what happened, he probably wouldn't be facing such a sentence.
It is the fact that he continued to protest his innocence and the fact that all the business about the woman he'd been talking to all night had to be dragged up and given in evidence that has earned him the likely jail term.
He was extremely unfortunate and we all feel for the people whose lives have been shattered by what happened, Its a shame he didn't hold his hands up and behave like a decent man from the beginning.
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Absolutely right Tom. Folks are keen to point the finger and say we should not do this or that but never take account of human behaviour or the way our bodies work.
As you say, we can fall asleep without even knowing we are doing so and we do not need to up all night to have that happen.
Even a large meal can cause sleepiness as the bodies energies go into digestion which is one of the single biggest users of our energy. Post prandeal torpor anyone? Transport cafe meals have been implicated in lorry accidents when crashes occur just after the driver has had a big meal.
Ever felt sleepy about an hour after a chocolate bar? This is because the blood sugar rises and then the body produces insulin to counteract it, sometimes overshoots and we nod off.
If someone had cut in front of him, the same thing could have happened, in the absence of extended barriers.
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I like your last point Tom.....
Strange how 100 + people have been killed since Clapham junction (1988) and nobody is taken to court.
If the Rail industry had acted on the report from the Clapham accident which recommended the fitment of Automatic train protection there would be 100+ people alive today.
The Hatfield incident is different but yet another clear example of how poor management allowed trains to run on dangerous tracks.
Nobody has been held accountable for these preventable deaths.
Mr Hart was reckless in my view and deserves a prison sentence.Hopefully this will make other drivers think carefully about driving after little sleep ...may save some lives.
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Tom
The drink driving analogy is not a good one. There is a legal limit of 80mg/ml in blood. Assuming I decide I want to drink and drive but stay within the law. I can drive at 70 in a 70 limit without any problems, but I want to go out tonight and drink but stay within the law, so 79mg/ml. Let's make it 70mg/ml to be absolutely sure, but it is impossible to calculate where that limit lies in relation to my alcohol intake/body weight/time of day etc.
To therefore be safe, perhaps I could err on 3 halves of beer being OK? We know premium lagers are stronger than regular beers, so I read the label to find out the content. Unfortunately, unlike supermarkets who add a simple calculation to all their foodstuffs £x per kg., there is no "1 bottle per 75kg bodyweight per hour" or similar. The simplest way to avoid the law is to abstain or catch a cab. Next problem is the morning after.
Like tiredness, the motto should be if you can feel the effects, you shouldn't drive. My guess is tiredness causes more "accidents" than drink driving.
Colin
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Interestingly, unlike in mainland Europe, there are no free rest areas adjacent to UK motorways. Another reader separately brought up this point by e-mail and we all know why there are no free rest areas: they would cost money and the government wouldn't make any money out of them. After all, making money out of motorists is the prime purpose of any UK road safety initiative. So if the EU imposes a Directive to install free rest areas along motorways I reckon this is one Directive we would welcome.
HJ
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HJ,
In Guy Lacey's earlier thread, I highlighted the measures taken locally to curb overtired drivers (Rumbles strips, signs, and laybyes). I was on the N1 (Johannesburg-Cape Town national road) today, and saw many motorists at the laybyes, obviously having realised (after hitting the rumble strips) that a stop in the middle of nowhere was a good idea. Hopefully the initiative, coupled with a huge TV radio and newspaper campaign, will have a drastic effect on the road deaths here this XMas. I certainly hope so.
As far as the UK seems to go, you write "we all know why there are no free rest areas: they would cost money and the government wouldn't make any money out of them."
They would also have to be policed - remember there have been many attacks on motorists who have stopped for a bit of shut-eye. (The case of Kevin Keegan springs to mind.) And that costs more money ...
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Huge number of issues here of which I am insufficently briefed or qualified to represent a view.
I do have concerns however regarding consistentcy within the courts as regards sentence and also the issue of handling corporate responsibility. Railtrack is a Corporate example already referred to and P&O is another. (Herald of Free Enterprise disaster)
Regards,
Julian
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I am not all convinced that sleep just arrives on a driver like a light going on (or off) as per earlier in this thread.
(FWIW The first sign I get is impairment of judge of presepective and distance. This creates alarming optical illusions of trucks parked in lane one of motorways, rather than on the shoulder. Time to stop!)
IMHO we all need to constantly monitor three areas to stay alive:
1/State of road and traffic, braking action,etc.
2/State of vehicle, gauges, noises, feedback from road
3/State of driver alertness to 1/ and 2/
rg
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re
"
1) Only an idiot would stay up all night on the internet then set off on a long journey the next day without any sleep. A lot of people who posted said they often went long periods without sleep because of having to work long hours, but Mr Hart was not working, he was talking to some woman he had not even met before!
"
so what, you are making a value judegement and implying it would be ok if he had been working the night before... both are equally as bad
i can point you at police stations where many officers stay up, go shopping etc, the day before their first day on night shift, go into work, work a night, and drive home the following morning... this is pretty common... suggest we apply the "those without guilt cast the first stone" principal
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and why oh why are the people who designed the bridge with inadequate crash barriers not in court ? or at least stopped from continuing to design road systems ?
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They should be brought to book too. But we must face one fact, if he had not fallen asleep he would not have needed a longer crash barrier and would not have been hit by a train.
10 families are without fathers/mothers/sons/daughters, how do you think they feel? How would you feel, if a preventable accident [hmm, maybe not accident, collision] wiped out a member of your family?
After these tradgic events, I think a few things need reviewing [i know a few of these have been said before]
Places where road and rail cross, at bridges and at level crossings. How many people dodge crossing gates? just not to be held up a few minutes
A serious un-bias study needs to be done on sleep deprivation [I know there has been a few done] but they need to be implimented
Free places to stop, I think its illegal to stop on hald shoulders to rest, and still dangerous.
I dont like writing long threads, get boring, so sorry.
Kev
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Could not agree more! See my thread some months ago starting as 'Safety by Design' (I think).
The unfortunate results of his actions were spectacularly out of all proportion to what any normal person could have predicted. I am not supporting his justification in driving whilst apparently dangerously tired, but am suprised by the number of people who feel that it could NEVER happen to them. Surely the sentencing should be related to the offence and not the outcome, particularly in case like this.
Like several people have said, if it had genuinely never happened to him before (falling asleep), how could he have any concept of it being a problem.
Most people who are honest will admit to have driven whilst probably too tired or slightly ill and where their judgement would have been impaired. Most people get away with it and it serves as a a literal wake up call.
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The logical extension of this seems to be to build crash barriers along the sides of all M-ways from end to end. Is this what we want, and do we think it would work? It is impossible to reduce risk to zero. Human nature means that if an activity becomes safer (i.e. less risky) certain people will take more chances. I suggest that Mr Hart is one of those people, especially considering the way he apparently drove from home before joining the M-way.
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careful driver wrote:
> i can point you at police stations where many officers stay
> up, go shopping etc, the day before their first day on night
> shift, go into work, work a night, and drive home the
> following morning... this is pretty common... suggest we
> apply the "those without guilt cast the first stone" principal
Shooping? There are some forces with shift patterns that only allow 6 hours between night and day shifts on the change day!
IE You work all night, go home get 4 hours kip tops then drive again. If you do two hours overtime that's it - no sleep!
The hypocrasy of this situation is incredible. Rozzers are driving afer perhaps 24 hours with no kip then whineing when others do it.
Factor into that the vast [1] number of people they kill and injure on the road and they really have no right to whine at me for 47 in a 30 in the middle of nowhere.
[1] 800 iirc.
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absolutely, i really wish this was on the front page of the papers!
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Surely drink driving can be looked at in the same vain? How do you know how drunk you are, especially the following morning, for instance. Sure, we all know that if you've stood at the bar all night drinking, you shouldn't drive, but at what point should you get behind the wheel again? Next morning? Lunchtime? I'm not condoning it, but it has always seemed a little unfair that you can be done for something when you don't know what the limit is. Bit like getting done for speeding when you have no speedo.
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I just have this uneasy feeling, as someone says below, that the powers that be could not tolerate another piece of carnage on the railways for which nobody is blamed and shamed. The jury must have had some doubts as well as it was a 10/2 majortiy verdict. 9/3 and he would have walked, at least as far as a retrial
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Miller,most people have done something dangerous in their lives. Many people consistently take chances and get away with it. And many do not even realise the risks they are taking. Be careful not to condemn others. Even the most sensible person can make an incredidbly unlucky mistake and have to pay the price.People get themselves into desperate trouble because they feel desperate.
Regards,
Mike
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Miller wrote:
Hi Miller,
There is no doubt that this guy is one of the worse dangerous drivers. However. He's going to get a sentence that most people wouldn't get for rape or murder.
And lets face it it's pure fluke 10 people died. If by fluke one of the trains was heading for collision and Harts vehicle had by equal fluke slowed the train safely and Hart had in fact saved 10 loves that would also be fluke and we wouldn't be rewarding him for his clear thinking would we!
But I see your point.
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Hmm, the problem is that he caused death by dangerous driving a.k.a manslaughter.
I can see the point that maybe prision isnt the best place for him, maybe he should be made to tour the country explaining why dangerous driving is dangeous.
But for whatever his punishment, he should not just walk away. He killed 10 people. If he had not fallen asleep, they would still be here.
Kev
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Kev wrote:
>
> I can see the point that maybe prision isnt the best place
> for him, maybe he should be made to tour the country
> explaining why dangerous driving is dangeous.
Then we're in agreement! I'n not agianst punishment! I just don't think what he did deserves the sentence he will now get!
A bloke near me clubbed someone to death with a snooker cue and got 4 years. (two with good behaviour)
Driving while tired *can't* be worse than that...
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exactly!
as it is now you get fined more for speeding than you do for beating up a copper, i am not joking! funny old country we are living in
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careful driver wrote:
> as it is now you get fined more for speeding than you do for
> beating up a copper, i am not joking!
True! You get a caution for shoplifting - not for speeding!
Rehabilitation? You nick something you get help with your problem - I got done speeding 4 times! Not once was I offered councelling to help me change my offending pattern.
I think instead of points you should get the option for a free 2 week rally course to help your driving. That'd 'lern' us.
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Didn't the "gentleman" recently convicted of also get 4 years for a previous offence of abducting, threatening and assaulting another girl.
Having read all three threads I still consider this guy Mr Doobry Smih (I think it's better if we do not use his real name) is being punished for the result not the actual mistake. I have to stand in the unpopular corner with a few others who views I respect here.
I cannot disagree with the view that being up all night on the net and then driving less than professionally is acceptable. Clearly it was not the actions of a sensible person.
Was it acting in a manner which any reasonable person would consider dangerous driving? Maybe, but only because of the actual consequences, if he had just run off into a field, then probably not.
Also a factor which is being given considerable weight is how he became to be tired and I am not sure that is correct other than circumstantial. Just what would have been the verdict if he had just got off an overnight long haul flight, or maybe they had had two weeks with a new and difficult baby.
So now I assume that we can expect prosecutions because a doctor is so bushed that he makes a mistake and someone dies as a result? One reason they were so tired is because they were on the net discussing with a colleague how to treat another patient with a particularly difficult and perplexing condition. So what is the difference?
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Stuart B wrote:
>
> Was it acting in a manner which any reasonable person would
> consider dangerous driving?
I agree with the tone of your message 100 per cent.
However falling asleep at the wheel is dangerous and needs to be punished!
Just not as harshly as it will be in this case.
This guy is gonna get ten years. I worse than if you killed someone. The message will be, if you have to murder people to avoid driving when tired, do so.
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>>So now I assume that we can expect prosecutions because a doctor is so bushed that he makes a mistake and someone dies as a result?
Its already happened, a number of times. Ditto Firemen, Ambulance drivers, Policeman and a Doctor on call.
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And the sentences in these cases were?
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Sorry need an edit button
the first sentence should read "recently convicted of murdering a small girl also get 4 yeras...."
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>>recently convicted of also get 4 years for
>>recently convicted of murdering a small girl also get 4 yeras...."
So much clearer the second time, now if I can just find "yeras" in my dictionary.....
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How long before your next typo! ;-)
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Stuart B wrote:
>
> Sorry need an edit button
Here we give you a wonderful forum and the opportunity to say (almost) anything you want, and you moan about a blooming edit button! Should I send you a pocket dictionary for Christmas or something?
(Incidentally, when the new-style Back Room eventually sees the light of day -- and please don't ask me "When?" -- there still won't be an edit button. But there should be a preview option so that you can read through what you've written as it will appear on the board before you finally commit yourself.)
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Martyn,
It's ME that needs the edit button not the forum! Or maybe a button to put quality control section of brain into gear before clicking post!
Actually forums which do have an edit button and/or a personal delete option look a bit strange sometimes and leave one wondering what the devil some of the later posters are banging on about.
Is that a better explanation of what I was thinking at the time?
S
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Stuart B wrote:
> Is that a better explanation of what I was thinking at the
> time?
>
> S
Yeah, I knew dat all along!
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i have often wondered what the 'quote' button does, but have never tried.
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ladas are slow wrote:
>
> i have often wondered what the 'quote' button does, but have
> never tried.
press it and find out!
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Stuart,
You're right about the forum edit facility. Another specialist forum I use has the facility and if someone chops their first post down because it looks daft in light of the replies....well then none of it makes sense.
David
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But, if we *did* have an edit button, then would have never known about Mr. Lacey's preferred entertainment !!
And it amuses me every time I think about it. Mind you, I've stopped visiting Devon, just in case.
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Mark,
Would this be the burning barrels competition, the generator game or that activity that is much much worse and lasts all day.
David
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one of the forums I post on gets around that by only letting you edit for 30 min after you post... works quite well
~R
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I think its best left as it is, that only Martyn can decide what should stay and what should go.
looking forward to this new style forum, will we have to log in? Or will it be 'oooo look, its all new'
Kev
P.S on a personal note, ive just noticed the search button, so may not notice the new one for a week or two, hmm
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OK I'm going to look really stupid, but here goes ... I can't see a 'quote' button.
Is it because I'm viewing this on a Mac?
:o(
Stu.
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Stu,
Next to "Post" at the bottom of the message box.
Can you see it?
David
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Hi David,
"Next to 'Post' at the bottom of the message box."
The 'post' button is all alone on mine I'm afraid (even with scrolling).
I was wondering what others were on about in the past.
Not really important, but a curious anomaly nonetheless.
Stu.
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>Would this be the burning barrels competition, the generator game or that activity that is much much worse and lasts all day.
This would be the all day event.
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Brill
I've just experimented.
The "Quote" button only appears in "Threaded View". Not in "Flat View".
Maybe Martyn BRM could get that made consistent.
Regards
B
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Nice one Brian,
I'm strictly a 'flat view' man, that's why I've never noticed it.
Stu.
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don't you find it difficult in flat view to work out which note is being replied to ? Or even which ones you have already looked at ?
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M(B),
You get used to it. I open a thread and read as I go, this way it's more like a conversation as you read each entry and scroll to the next message, then the next, without opening and closing each message. I take your point re the order but if you read them this way you find that most of the messages are sequential, and the odd ones out are obvious as to their meaning.
I simply prefer to view a thread in its open form, without having to open and close one message at a time, better flow.
I realise I may be the odd one out on this method, also I find the threaded view is also ugly whereas the flat view seems more natural.
(Typical graphic designer's waffle, sorry).
I'd like to see a straw poll on this viewing technique, and will give the other method a try meanwhile.
Stu.
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Brill
Like you, I normally only use flat view and find it quicker and more natural.
You are not alone !
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> "...You are not alone! "
But I think we may have wondered terribly off-thread. :ol
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Not really.
If Mr Hart had stayed up all night debating thread vs flat viewing, as opposed to some left-handed mousework (allegedly), maybe he wouldn't have fallen asleep...
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Flat view, me too.
As discussed before the only way to get things posted in their proper place in the tree is to start the post from threaded view and click reply to this message unless you are already at the particular message. Posting from any other angle just dumps it at the bottom, therefore I believe you get quite a few posts in the wrong place anyway. Therefore flat view is the only way to see the chronological order.
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