WHEN two young men decided that the Grand Prix season should begin a month early, not at Silverstone, Spa, Monza or Monaco but on the A9 in Perthshire, it’s reasonable to expect that sanctions against them would be severe.
It was a miracle there was no crash or injury. The guilty men deserved a thrashing with a wheel-wrench, but they received instead a tickle from a fluffy dice that will have as much impact as a midge landing on a Jumbo jet’s wing.
They had, a police officer said, demonstrated an “absolute disregard” for other road users, yet their punishment, handed down last week, was community service, a 15-month driving ban and a re-test order. That must seem like a decent result to a pair of clowns who behaved like potential murderers.
You might not consider a car to be a murder weapon, but then neither is an ordinary kitchen knife. When in the hands of someone incapable of reason, however, it is. Being hit by a ton of metal and glass and red-hot engine parts travelling at more than 100mph is rarely survivable.
Christopher Burke, 23, and Josh Robson, 18, were convicted of racing each other on a notorious stretch of the A9 between Aberuthven and Perth at speeds of up to 120mph. When police first spotted them, their Vauxhall Astra and Peugeot 206 cars were travelling at 101mph just feet apart. They were going so fast that the police car travelling at more than 120mph took 10 miles to catch them.
It is, of course, for the courts to decide punishments in such cases, but one of the simplest and most cost-effective penalties for inexcusable driving is underused. Take away their licences so that it really hurts, I say. A 15-month ban is chicken feed. They’ll be back on the road next spring, ready to behave like crazed killers once more. If they passed their test first time round then they’ll probably pass the test quite easily.
For far too long, we have tolerated a culture of excessive speed on public roads. The driving test has been compulsory since 1935 and so almost every current British motorist has passed one, yet thousands ignore what they learned and ignore the consequences. That can only be because they have little to fear if caught.
A driving licence is a privilege, not a right. It should be hard-earned and easily lost. Dangerous drivers must be taken out before they take us out. Automatic driving bans should be in place for all excessive speeding offences. If you travel at, say, 20mph above the limit, such as 50mph in a 30mph zone or 90mph in a 70mph zone, the ban for a first offence should be five years. The ban for a second offence should be 10 years and any subsequent offence should lead to a lifetime ban. In each case, there should be no excuses and no mitigating circumstances, especially for celebrities.
Such sanctions might just penetrate the thick skulls of the likes of footballer Ashley Cole, who must be thrilled that the penalty handed down to him last week for driving at 104mph in a 50mph zone was a pathetic four-month ban and a fine that’s probably less than the amount of loose change he carries in his designer-suit pocket.
Cole was driving his Lamborghini on the congested A3 near London at the time of the offence, proving his brains are in his boots not his head. An automatic five-year driving ban would remove him from our roads for much of his playing career. A four-month ban is just a bad joke.
Cole’s not alone, though. Comedian Stephen Fry escaped with five points on his licence and a £300 fine instead of a ban for driving at 99mph. Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman has twice been caught speeding and those whose smart lawyers extricated them from speeding charges on technicalities include Sir Alex Ferguson, Jeremy Clarkson, Colin Montgomerie, Dean Gaffney, Andrew Flintoff and Keiron Fallon.
There are too many drivers on our roads, so losing some stupid speeders is a win-win situation. It makes their lives more difficult and ours easier. It costs almost nothing to enforce and removing their unwelcome emissions is even environmentally desirable.
Tragically, inappropriate speed often kills, too. I attended a serious collision a few years ago where excessive speed was the cause. I can still hear the screams of the dying young driver and the dreadful silence when he fell quiet, forever.
All those guilty of driving at excessive speed should be forced to listen to those screams, see the mangled wreckage and bodies with their own eyes and then visit the homes of grieving relatives before they see their licences again.
Those images should haunt them every time they press the accelerator in future.