87-year-old killer driver

The scandal continues of monstrously selfish car-addicted geriatric drivers who are physically unfit to drive but who are permitted to keep driving dangerously under a system which allows them to verify their own fitness to drive independent of any assessment by a third party.

These highly dangerous old fools kill time and time again but no government – least of all the current petrolhead ConDem regime – is interested in preventing this. The protection of killer drivers is institutionalised and seems likely to remain so since there appears to be no organisation campaigning on this issue.

An 87-year-old motorist with appalling eyesight who fatally injured a disabled woman while she was riding a mobility scooter has escaped serious punishment.

War veteran Raymond Hampshire had cataracts in both eyes and was unfit to be on the road because everything appeared ‘foggy’ to him.

He was driving home from a casino on a dark winter’s evening when he failed to see 43-year-old spina bifida sufferer Fiona Buckley and hit her scooter.

[So his gambling addiction was fed by his car addiction.]

She died in hospital six weeks later from multi-organ failure due to the injuries sustained in the accident.

Hampshire – who was one of Britain’s oldest drivers – admitted causing her death by careless driving.

But choosing to drive at night when you can barely see is not ‘careless’ it is conscious, wilful criminal negligence.

As usual, anyone who doesn’t dress up at night like a Christmas tree is regarded as fit for execution by a motorist:

But Judge Robert Moore took pity on the ex-soldier and gave him an absolute discharge after hearing that an accident expert regarded the victim as reckless for riding on the road in the dark on a black scooter with no lights or reflectors fitted.

The judge said: ‘Punishment is not appropriate, the fact of the conviction is the real punishment.’

Eh?

He found special reasons not to ban him from driving and only gave him three penalty points.

The judge said Hampshire’s level of culpability fell below sentencing guidelines and the motorist had accepted some responsibility for the death.

The controversial sentence angered Miss Buckley’s relatives. After the hearing, her aunt Audrey Heeley, 74, said: ‘We are all upset over the sentence.

‘I don’t think the judge appreciated that the wheelchair was only on the road momentarily so Fiona could get onto the pavement. We loved Fiona very much and will miss her. She was an inspiration to us all.’

Amazingly it emerges that this geriatric fuckwit also ran down the dead woman’s carer:

The accident happened in Sheffield around 10pm on December 6, 2008. Miss Buckley was riding in the road with her carer Kay Pilley, 46, walking just behind.

They were going in the same direction as Hampshire’s Ford Sierra. The former taxi driver, later told police he was doing about 20mph.

A former taxi driver? Say no more. And needless to say the driver’s assessment of his speed is as worthless as his own assessment of his fitness to drive.

He said: ‘Suddenly I heard this bang at the front of the car and wondered what it was. I never saw them at all. That was it.’

Police tested Hampshire’s eyesight after the crash and found he could not read a number plate from the required distance of 20.5 metres.