Thursday 7 October 2010

Drunk killer driver will be allowed back on the roads

A DRINK driver who was three times the legal limit when he fatally collided with a cyclist was today jailed for five years after "utterly devastating" the victim's family.

Senior software consultant Konstantinos Tourlas died after suffering a broken neck when speeding motorist Andrzej Stankiewicz struck him head on after crossing onto the wrong side of the road.

But he wasn’t banned for life. The right to drive is a human right the courts are far more determined to uphold than the right to cycle in safety. So this driver was

banned from driving for 10 years.

But that’s only in the UK. As a Polish national Stankiewicz can return to the continent and continue driving there once he is released (which will probably be in 2013). The EU is curiously slow about ‘harmonising’ restrictions on driving, even for the very worst offenders.