The consequences:

What happens when you are to blame?

By ACM Regional
07 March 2017

It might only take one moment to do something stupid behind the wheel of a car and cause a fatal crash, but the guilt and regret can last forever.

For those convicted of the most serious criminal charges, the first few years of penance are most likely to be behind bars.

Beechworth Correctional Centre is a minimum security prison that holds non-violent criminals, such as those serving time for culpable driving offences.

Part of their time in custody involves going out into communities supervised and talking at forums such as the Cool Heads driver awareness program about their history and what they learnt.

Michael, who cannot be identified, was serving a minimum six-year jail term and told a group of young drivers at a forum about what occurred when, at 19 years old, he chose to drive home from a party after a night of heavy drinking.

“I hit a top speed of 120 kilometres an hour,” he said.

“As I did that, the car stopped at red lights and I smashed up the backside of that car, instantly killing a 69-year-old male passenger.”

Michael also seriously injured the five passengers in his own car and spent years cut off from his children and friends when serving his jail sentence.

Another Beechworth prisoner, Sandy, was 30 years old when he killed a man of similar age because he was driving after drinking.

“I still see his face every morning when I wake up because, at the time, I went over there to try and pull him out of the car,” he said.

“You think you have friends for life… They just forget about you.”
- Michael

A person convicted of culpable driving is usually sent to jail for six to nine years, but they are not the average type of criminal.

Solicitor Peter Ward has run many culpable driving cases in court over the years and said his clients were usually very different to the drug addicts and career criminals responsible for most other offences.

“The unusual thing about them is you’re usually dealing with normal people,” he said.

“They’ve acted irresponsibly, but in their daily lives, they’re responsible… You could have a moment of madness and go to jail for years.”

Most had never been in trouble before, and either had too much to drink or made a fatal mistake with gross negligence.

But that did not stop the community’s expectation and magistrates’ determination to come down hard because, even if accidental, that poor decision claimed a life.

“It has an unbelievable impact on victim’s families, but it can change the entire life of some people,” Mr Ward said.

“Especially when they haven’t been in trouble before, they’re staggered.”

He said he found Victorian courts harsher on culpable driving than states like NSW, which was traditionally tougher on other criminals.

“You could have a moment of madness and go to jail for years.”

Detective Senior Sergeant Gerard Clanchy said his unit was often called to a crash when someone had died or there were life-threatening injuries, and evidence the surviving driver could be charged.

From the basics of ensuring a breath test or blood sample has been taken from the surviving driver to looking for identifying or debris marks on the road, their methodical approach looks for the answer to who is responsible.

“It can take hours to process the scene,” Detective Clanchy said.

“Every piece of evidence or part of a car will be collected and examined.

“That’s why it’s very painstaking, especially in hit and run cases.”

Something as a minute fragment of debris can help identify the offending car with the manufacturer.

“If there’s evidence to support any charges, it will go to a criminal court… otherwise it will be the coroner’s court,” Detective Clanchy said.

“As far as the resolution of the investigation, it can be a number of years in some cases.”

It can take time for the results of blood tests to be finalised, but the MCIU also looks to outside experts to give evidence, such as how the sleep and work habits of a driver could contribute to fatigue leading up to a crash.

But while officers work to prosecute drivers responsible for crashes, Detective Clanchy said they are also in contact with family of the victim who are waiting for closure.

“That’s one of the more emotional sides of the investigation,” he said.

“Everybody reacts differently to these type of tragic cases.”

“Some people need more support than others.”

The MCIU attended 157 collisions in 2016, up from 144 the year before. These included mostly fatalities and some serious injury crashes.

Detective Clanchy says it only takes a moment of a driver’s eyes leaving the road to cause a crash. He pleaded with people to always concentrate.

“A moment of distraction could be the end of it, you could crash into a tree.”

“We want people to get to their destinations and come home safely as well.”

As a police officer who has attended more than 200 fatalities over 26 years, Senior Sergeant Darren Wittingslow strongly believes drivers need to be held accountable for causing crashes.

“Ultimately these vehicles don’t run off the road and crash into other vehicles by themselves, it’s the person behind the steering wheel,” he said.

“Drivers need to be reminded that, although we acknowledge that people don’t go out there on the whole intentionally thinking ‘I’m going to crash today’ - we know that people make mistakes, it’s about us trying to influence those behaviors to stop that happening - but drivers need to be aware that we will hold them to account.

“If we see any acts of criminality or any breaches of the road safety act, for careless driving, they will be prosecuted.”

“We owe it to the families of these people to be able to understand what happened”

A highway patrol officer attends every serious injury collision in the north-east, firstly to help the injured, then to preserve the scene and find out what happened.

“If, in the worst-case scenario, someone does die, we owe it to the families of these people to be able to understand what happened,” Senior Sergeant Wittingslow said.

He said the officer looked into four elements - safer cars, drivers, roads and speeds - to find a cause.

While few fatalities are caused by cars themselves, police push for drivers to buy vehicles with the latest safety features.

They also work with VicRoads to improve roads and speed limits.

“We can have our visible police presence, we can do our random drug testing and breath testing, we do speed enforcement, but we can’t be everything to everybody,” Senior Sergeant Wittingslow said.

“It’s a matter of changing behaviours, it’s a matter of putting the phone in the glove box or putting the phone on silent… If something is around them at the time, the consequences can be absolutely tragic and people will be held to account.”

“We want people to get to their destinations and come home safely
as well.”
Next time…

The ripple effect: How road trauma affects those we love

Credits:

WORDS | Shana Morgan
PHOTOS | Fairfax photographers and file images
DIGITAL PRODUCERS | Jordan Avery, Cassandra Dalgleish & Ashley Fritsch
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