If police stopped wasting time searching through Twitter and Facebook for so-called hate crimes we might get somewhere.They argue that these so-called crimes cause alarm and distress but it could be argued that having someone driving towards you at 50mph on a phone also causes alarm and distress,in fact,a lot of alarm and distress.When we get a proper police force that isn't run by politcally correct idiots we might get somewhere.
Agreed however, its somewhere in the region of 40% of all calls to the police are social media "harassment" related. Under NCRS the police have to record and therefore investigate them all, knowing that the vast vast majority of the jobs are utter rubbish.
Traffic matters are mainly categorised as non crime and therefore fall to the bottom of the pile of an ever growing workload because these aren't a KPI for the force.
Traffic departments or roads policing units as they are called, have been seen as the ginger step child for as long as ive been in the police and are continually paired back and / or their work parameters changed, moving them away from actually policing the roads.
I'm no longer on a traffic department but good friends are. They work with just one traffic officer per shift covering a district that used to be 2 separate divisions each of which were covered by 3 traffic officers. So from 6 down to 1. The workload hasn't changed therefore, there is little or no time for pro active policing, to the point where you have to ignore offences you see because the job you are on your way to has a response time which you have to make.
As a traffic officer, all I wanted to do was make the roads in my area safer. All my bosses wanted was for response times to be met.
In relation to the sentencing of drivers involved in fatal collisions, the maximum currently stands at 14 years for death by dangerous driving and death by due care whilst unfit through drink or drugs. These maximums are rarely used.
You can have the maximum sentence increased to whatever you want but if the government guidelines tie the hands of the courts, sentences will not increase.
As for throwing away the key............ there are many serious and fatal collisions which are the result of very minor errors of judgement which have catastrophic results. Hundreds of drivers every day misjudge the speed of vehicles approaching their junction, they pull out and cause the approaching vehicle to swerve or brake hard to avoid a collision. Some result in a collision where only damage is caused to both vehicles. These rarely come to the attention of the police. Every now and again, the chain reaction from this minor error of judgement results in a death. There clearly needs to be a punishment, but throwing away the key? Not all fatal collisions are the result of intentional idiotic driving.