jules21 wrote:I don't even understand why they have to argue the cause. If she was playing with her phone, which seems highly likely, it would explain her not seeing Jason before running into him. If she was doing something else, it must have been equally as bad to result in the same outcome.
My understanding of the difference is this: if you are texting, you are already breaking the law, whether or not you hit someone. If you are looking at the speedo instead of the road you are not breaking the law (it would be argued). So it's not killing someone because you were breaking the law, it's killing someone due to a momentary mistake.
That's how Caleb Wills and Mohamed Fageer, to name but two, got off with no or minimal sentence despite killing a cyclist and being 100% at fault.
I agree that is a horrible injustice, but that is how the laws stand at the moment. I have said before (and I am sure no one on this forum would disagree), that if you kill another road user and you are at fault, then it should be dangerous driving, by definition.