Andrew Dowdell: Where is the line between dangerous driving and murder?
WHEN people are killed by intoxicated drivers who are speeding or fleeing police, many question why they are rarely charged with murder or manslaughter. Should dangerous driving laws be toughened — VOTE NOW
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WHEN innocent South Australians are killed by intoxicated drivers who are speeding or fleeing police, many question why the culprits are rarely charged with murder or manslaughter.
Currently, the vast majority of road deaths caused by reckless or culpable driving result in offenders being charged with aggravated causing death by dangerous driving.
That in itself is one of the state’s most-serious offences carrying a maximum term of life imprisonment.
However the maximum is largely symbolic, as such a drastic sentence has never been imposed here.
But in the worst cases, prosecutors can choose to lay the most serious charge on the criminal calendar — murder, or on occasions manslaughter.
Such charges are not unprecedented but rare.
Earlier this year, Whyalla man Michael Frank Knowles became the first South Australian convicted of murder by using his motor vehicle.
Knowles, drunk and angry at a breakup, deliberately drove his 4WD head-on into a car containing four young friends, killing two and seriously injuring two others.
The jury accepted that Knowles, who told his ex-girlfriend he was going to kill himself, had intentionally hit the other car knowing full well he could cause serious harm or death.
Proving murder or manslaughter is more difficult because intent must be proven, in contrast to causing death by dangerous driving, which only requires the jury to be satisfied that the driving was indeed outside the realms of normal inattention or human error.
Such a case occurred in 2007, when two teenagers went to trial charged with the death of a 15-year old boy during a race along North East Rd three years earlier.
Prosecutors argued their driving went beyond that of reckless or culpable driving, yet the teens were acquitted of manslaughter and found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving.
In recent years, judges have imposed prison terms for the worst cases of dangerous driving comparable to that of an offence of manslaughter by criminal negligence, reflecting the community’s horror at such senseless waste of life.
