To think that a three year jail sentence is unreasonable for the disabled pedestrian who was found guilty of causing the death of a cyclist

[DotAndCarryOne2]

The Sunday Times and The Guardian carried this story earlier this month and again today, as did GB News. Link is below. I just find it unbelievable that so much relevant information about this lady’s disability was either ignored or dismissed by the judge, and that she didn’t have adequate representation at sentencing.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjj6omaqvr9AhWJbcAKHVv9DMkQFnoECAkQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk%2Fhome-news%2Fcyclist-manslaughter-auriol-grey-cambridgeshire-b2294507.html&usg=AOvVaw1yOHhh6F4zfEel6m4EMYpL

If you can't stop when something is happening, you are riding too fast for shared environment.

Afaik Ms Grey was shouting first, so there was a moment to recognise some irregularity was happening.
Seems Ms Grey is being judged because she had the bad luck that the cyclist was less stable and not able to react.

Her arms accidentally pushed the woman into the road?

Is that the sound of a scraping barrel I can hear?

Because it's their job to get best outcome for client (not the most lenient, note) and that may include applying for appeal. That is not a clear cut indication judge did something wrong.

Even murderers try to appeal. Myra Hindley tried iirc, so did many others.

Seems Ms Grey is being judged because she had the bad luck that the cyclist was less stable and not able to react.

She was judged because she caused a woman’s death by causing her to fall in the path of a car.

You can see in the video Celia Ward was not riding fast. It’s a shared path, she was not in Auriol’s way, she had every right to pass.

She’s judged because she screamed and swore at a cyclist and then pushed her into the road.

She saw Celia Ward from several feet away. She deliberately came into her path and admits she made contact. That was no accident.

We have a shared cycle pedestrian path near us which is not 3m wide.

I feel, after reading the many threads on here about this case, with the many links, that she reacted in a way that caused someone's death and then went to the shops to do some shopping instead of staying & helping her, she deserved her sentence

Unfortunately, this is in French.

The guy is basically being a total arsehole - sexist, racist etc. The camera pans out to see he is a wheelchair.

The end quote is - this man is in a wheelchair - but foremost, he is an arsehole - handicapped people are people like everyone else.

I think this is relevant here.

Afaik Ms Grey was shouting first, so there was a moment to recognise some irregularity was happening.
Right, so as long as I shout/scream 'get out of my fucking way!' My actions even if they result in someone's death are fine and unpunishable?

3 years is an absolute joke. Should have been 15 minimum. Awful woman

Partially sighted woman comes at cyclist, shouting, swearing and swatting at her, and forces her into the road.

There's nothing accidental about it.

I think a lot of people just don't realise that unintended consequences of an action aren't the same thing as an accident.

She didn’t leave the scene voluntarily, she was led away by a bystander - police evidence supports this. People keep saying she ‘lied’ to the police when in actual fact when she was asked what happened she replied that she thought she had shouted at her to slow down, and had waved her arms. When she was shown the video evidence she agreed she was wrong. The Sun, The Mirror and the Daily Fail all reported it as lying to the police - completely overlooking the fact that she was interviewed by police, and later faced sentencing without the support which should have been in place for a vulnerable adult. And that’s my issue. I have no problem with people being punished for their actions - disability, as someone upthread commented, is not a get out of jail card. But inconsistencies in her treatment by the police and within the legal system have come to light which suggest that safeguarding policies for vulnerable adults may not have been followed, and if that’s the case then it needs to be addressed.

If I saw signs to indicate I was on a shared pathway I wouldn’t get off my bike to check the pavement is 3m wide, most regular people aren’t going to know the regulations and a woman with a cognitive disability severe enough to remove accountability for her actions is highly unlikely to have known that. There are signs to indicate the pavements are shared on the connecting pavements and no signs to indicate the end of the shared pavement so most cyclists and pedestrians would assume it was still part of the cycleway. The fact there was no adequate signage is the fault of the council but it doesn’t sound like there was anything to indicate it wasn’t part of the shared cycleway.

But the whole premise for the sentence she received was that the intent was there.

Re the cyclist 'not stopping' - apparently she did. She then moved forward intending to pass Auriol Grey:

"The court heard evidence from a number of witnesses, and I found William Walker to be reliable and thoughtful. He is a cyclist and driver. He said that you and Mrs Ward appeared to have come to a halt in front of each other and you made a lateral sweeping movement with your left arm which was directed at Mrs Ward. He said “it either made contact or she recoiled and fell”. She fell into the busy ring road where she was killed by a passing car driven by Carla Money."

This reminds me of a post in my local FB community group. Someone's car got keyed, and they caught it on CCTV. It was an elderly man on a mobility scooter. Cue loads of comments about how he was disabled so obviously did not mean it... it was an accident etc. His niece even posted saying it was not him. Then there was a flood of comments... more footage, from other people who had also had their cars keyed.. all from the same man. His niece ended up apologising... her uncle was confronted and admitted to it all. He was just a nasty man.

Yep!

Even Wayne Couzens - the police officer who killed Sarah Everard, appealed his sentence.

He appealed his whole life sentence.
He also believed he had been unfairly treated by the judge.

He lost and is rotting away in prison

Why is her appeal on the sentence and not the verdict then? It's because due process was followed and the correct result emerged.

Where ? Department of Transport guidelines state that shared pathways should be 3m wide - the one in question was 2.4m and neither the police or the council could support the assertion by the judge that it was shared

well it’s signed clearly as a shared use path now and is still only 2.4m wide. The path further along was always signed as a shared use path and was the same width.

the police and council could not find any evidence that it was not a shared path.

I think she got off lightly tbh.

OP would you feel the same if the cyclist that died due to the actions of this person were a little child?
Even if prison isn’t the right place for her she has shown herself to be a danger to the public and that usually means curtailment of freedom in some form or other.

And if she is so mentally impaired that she couldn’t help it then she probably needs locking away for longer to prevent her doing the same again. Possibly for the rest of her life.

It's tragic all round. Cyclists make me incandescent for their scant regard for the highway code and apparent belief that traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, etc., do not apply to them. Their breaches need to be enforceable. As indeed do the breaches of the public when they veer into aggression and cause accidents. Whether the pavement was shared or not physical force was not the answer.

I find a Paddington stare and "pavements are for pedestrians" suffices or results in being given either one or two fingers by the average cyclist.