alioth,
Do you not think that the prospect of prison would make it less likely that the driver be distracted?
Timothy wrote:
Do you not think that the prospect of prison would make it less likely that the driver be distracted?
I certainly don’t think so. How would it even be possible to keep from being distracted? Not for a short time, mind you (as when doing an approach to land) but all the time.
Airborne_Again wrote:
If a train driver ignores the speed limit by mistake, then it’s a systems failure and should be treated as such. The question law enforcement should ask is: Has the system been set up in the best reasonable way to deal with human mistakes?
IMO you are mixing apples and bananas here. The law enforcement (the police) only ask if there is a possibility of gross negligence, or if some laws have been broken. If they think so, they will prosecute. It’s only in an eventual court, that the question of systems failure will/could pop up, usually due to facts found in the accident report from the (independent) investigation bureau. The possibility of systems failure does not exclude the possibility of gross negligence, if anything it will make the severity of eventual negligence larger, thus more reason to prosecute.
This stuff will be highly country-specific.
Timothy wrote:
Do you not think that the prospect of prison would make it less likely that the driver be distracted?
No. Absolutely not.
It’s the main thing that puts me off touching my mobile phone in the car, keeping it out of reach
That’s one potential distraction removed.
Mobile phones (and drink driving) are wilful though. Most distractions aren’t wilful. There probably isn’t a driver the length of the land who didn’t have some kind of momentary distraction while driving to work this morning, or whose mind didn’t wander, and it’s just in 99.99% of cases, no harm gets done – or only a small amount of harm gets done (I know at least a couple of people who have caused a rear end collision with the vehicle in front after they were distracted by seeing a very attractive person walking along the pavement nearby – millions of years of evolved behaviour will sometimes win against around a century of human experience of motoring).
When I don’t use my phone in the car I’m not thinking “Don’t pick up the phone, I might get nicked”, I’m thinking “Don’t pick up the phone, I might crash”. The idea of being prosecuted doesn’t even figure, the thought of the possibility of crashing on the other hand is extremely present.
So we are not all the same. Having that Sword of Damocles clearly works for some, it’s a question of working out how many.
I bet that there are a lot who think as I do (as well as about the safety argument.)
after they were distracted by seeing a very attractive person walking along the pavement nearby
Hmmmm… there was no need for that 400 page report 
I am not going to post the BA038 cartoon… we would get complaints.
The UK CAA are reluctant to prosecute in Scotland, but the Procurator Fiscal has prosecuted when the CAA has not. A C172 on approach to Insch bounced off a Mercedes on a farm track, crossing just short of the threshold, springing out both windscreen and rear window, with no injuries.
The pilot was convicted and fined.
Non Scottish pilots get away with flying under bridges – the last was a French formation under the Kessock bridge. No prosecutions. Spanish pilots flew under the Ballachulish bridge, and an English pilot flew under the Skye bridge, and were found not guilty in court.
