Another killer breezes out of court and gets a trivial driving ban

A thug who sped along the wrong side of a dangerous road, smashing into and killing a cyclist, avoided a jail sentence on Tuesday. Bridie maker Brian Taylor, 29, was cycling to his work in the early hours of the morning when Stephen McKay ploughed his silver Rover 400 car into him. Mr Taylor, a father of one with a young daughter, was thrown from his bike and was so severely injured that he died at the scene.

McKay, a 35-year-old plumber, told cops that the cyclist didn't have his lights on, but investigators later found skid marks which suggested McKay had been on the wrong side of the road and lost control. At Dunfermline Sheriff Court, Sheriff Craig McSherry sentenced McKay to 240 hours community service and banned him from driving for 12 months.

Sheriff McSherry told McKay: "Had you been driving at a reckless speed you would be facing a charge of reckless driving. This quite obviously had a terrible outcome for the family of the accused, but in saying that, I do not believe the level of carelessness is substantial enough to merit a sentence of imprisonment."

So what is careless and what is reckless? In the perverted world of the Crown Prosecution Service this counts as carelessness not criminal recklessness:

Post-accident analysis showed McKay had been doing up to 60 miles per hour mph on the twisting unclassified road, which has a limit of 40.