Spot the difference

This one will test you. Two stories, remarkably similar, but… not.

A driver found guilty of killing another motorist as she used her mobile phone to send a string of text messages and make calls has been jailed.

Phillipa Curtis, from Suffolk, crashed into Victoria McBryde’s parked car at 70mph on the A40 near Wheatley – Ms McBryde was fatally injured.

The 21-year-old was found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving at Oxford Crown Court at an earlier hearing. She was jailed for 21 months and given a three-year driving ban.
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Meanwhile:

The sentencing of a Labour peer who sent and received text messages while driving on the M1 where he was involved in a fatal crash has been adjourned.

Lord Ahmed, 51, of Rotherham, was driving his Jaguar when he collided with another car on Christmas Day 2007. The driver of the vehicle, Martyn Gombar, 28, was killed.

Lord Ahmed was never charged over the crash but admitted one charge of dangerous driving in connection with sending and receiving the text messages while driving.
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The lesser charge of dangerous driving carries a maximum sentence of 2 years imprisonment as opposed to that of causing death by dangerous driving, which can carry up to 14 years.

The lesson here? Don’t send text messages while driving your car. But if you do, then make sure you are a Labour peer and not a waitress.

12 thoughts on “Spot the difference

  1. Pity such a law is not implemented in Cape Town. It seems compulsory for evey woman to drive yapping away with a cellphone clamped to their right ear.. Really grinds my gears (tm Peter Griffin)

  2. Goblin > Blunt instrument like a Nokia N70?

    Po > Life is so unfair.

    DW > Come now – not just the women. But I have noticed that the price of a decent hands-free system (+/- R400) seems to be beyond drivers of Mercs, BMWs and big 4×4’s.

  3. Handsfree is so last century.
    How will everyone be able to see that you have the latest & greatest phone that matches your white sunglasses? 😉

  4. Sorry i forget you are a larney that lives behind the lentil curtain. Us ‘i can like to wear jean pant’ double cab driving japies are a bit slow behind the boerewors curtain, but white sunglasses bought at the robots are de rigueur this summer. So what’s the latest style on your side?

  5. DW > All the rage this morning is the one-armed sunglasses look, invented by myself after my daughter got hold of my sunnies over breakfast.

  6. In Ahmed’s case, I think the 12 weeks was for dangerous driving and did not consider ensuing events (crash and death). The judge ruled that there was no connection! *gasps*

    Learned Fool´s last blog post was: Lord Ahmed gets 12 weeks (Note: 6000 miles… is not responsible for the content of external internet sites)

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