Taxi Driver Online

Uber driver who crashed in Darwen double drink drive limit

https://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/25 ... ive-limit/

An Uber driver who crashed his car as he carried passengers from Darwen towards Bolton was more than double the drink drive limit.

Blackburn Magistrates' Court heard the car driven by Faizan Anjum had collided with a road barrier, causing the airbags to deploy.

A police officer who attended said if it hadn't been for the barrier, he could well have been dealing with a fatal crash.

Anjum, 33, of Whitewell Place, Blackburn, pleaded guilty to driving while unfit through drink.

He was made subject to a community order for 12 months, with five days of rehabilitation activity requirements and a 120-day alcohol abstinence monitoring requirement.

He was banned from driving for 36 months and ordered to pay £85 costs and a £114 victim surcharge.

Deputy District Judge Wajid Khalil said by all accounts it was fortunate that nobody received more serious injuries.

"You clearly placed members of the public at serious risk," he said.

Glenn Anderson, prosecuting, said two women had booked the Uber through the app and were picked up at 4.15am.

"They were sitting in the rear of the vehicle and described the driver as normal," said Mr Anderson.

"Next thing they knew, the taxi had crashed. The airbags were activated, and the seat belts caused bruising to both passengers."

Mr Anderson said the officer who attended said it was fortunate the car had hit the barrier because otherwise it would have been a fatal crash.

The defendant admitted he had been drinking and gave a roadside breath test of 87 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath, against the legal limit of 35mcg.

"He was taken to hospital and by the time blood samples were taken, the reading was under the limit," said Mr Anderton.

Anjum, who was not represented, said he could only apologise.

He had a previous alcohol related driving conviction in 2016.

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IDFIMH

not normally that long for a first offence so was he a risk when he got his license ?

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

Very strange if he later passed a blood sample. I always thought the roadside test was none evidential? Perhaps if he’d pled not guilty he’d be charged with a different offence (dangerous/careless driving ?)

That was for his 2nd, and most recent offence.

It's the minimum that a court must impose for a second (in 10 years) offence.

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IDFIMH

The police/CPS would have engaged an expert to backtrack his readings.

The roadside test is evidence, but not sufficient on its own.

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IDFIMH

Google suggests the process is called 'retrospective extrapolation'?

Or 'hindsight is a wonderful thing' for police and CPS lawyers

But there must have been a significant time gap between the roadside breath test and later blood tests, if the former was 87 mcgs compared to the legal limit of 35 mcgs, but the blood test was below the legal limit.

Of course, maybe the 87 mcgs roadside breath test was unreliable, but we're not told what the results of the 'retrospective extrapolation' blood tests were - maybe they deemed him just over the limit, as opposed to the 2.5 times the limit suggested by the breath test

But it seems the retrospective extrapolation process relies on estimates and assumptions that may not be wholly reliable, and thus the process ripe for interrogation and challenge by defence lawyers

Who knows, maybe if he'd challenged the process via a good defence lawyer, the result might have been different

Anyway, given that he simply apologised to the court, then it's presumably safe to assume he had been drinking. But if he picked the women up at that time, when had he started drinking? Had he just started his shift an hour or two previously (a very odd time to start), or had gone for a break and had drinks ( ) or had he been working for several hours after drinking and thus had been even more blootered earlier in his shift?

Of course, I suppose he literally could have simply started drinking during his shift...

As the levels alleged are below what would send him to custody, there is no legal aid.

Therefore, any defence would have to be self-funded.

That defence would need an expert to counter the evidence given by the CPS's expert.

As experts can only deal with facts and scientific studies, the chances of the two experts disagreeing are very very slim.

When you also take into account a self-funded defence, including the cost of engaging an expert, would be in excess of £10,000, it's no surprise to me that the fella pleaded guilty.

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IDFIMH

Here's a clue: "He had a previous alcohol related driving" conviction in 2016.

Au contraire, seems like there are a lot of assumptions and variables involved, which would be easy for a defence expert to pick holes in as regards being beyond reasonable doubt etc

Plenty of stuff available online, but I'll resist the temptation to paste screeds of stuff here, particularly the stuff that's AI generated

But there are a couple of obvious facts and variables missing from the piece which are fundamental to whether it was challengeable, in my opinion at least.

First, we're not told how long it was between the breath test showing he was more than twice the limit as compared to the blood test showing he was below the limit. If it was 20 minutes, then the breath test was presumably nonsense, and the extrapolation must have shown he was just over the limit, therefore ripe for challenge...

On the other hand, if the blood test showed he was just under the limit eight hours (say) after the breath test, then a lot more obvious that he would have been significantly over it six hours previously

But we're not told the time lapse, we're not told what the blood test actually showed, and we're not told how far above the limit the extrapolation demonstrated...

Obviously I'm playing devil's advocate a bit here

But I'm totally clueless about all the costs stuff, and obviously £10k or whatever is a huge barrier to mounting a defence. And if his regression analysis (or whatever) is a bit rusty, then not much chance of conducting his own defence

took 4 days but finally got someone to bite

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

The process is quite simple, really, and as there have been many thousands of cases, it's generally accepted what's right and what's wrong.

The countback process is scientifically proven and accepted by the higher courts; thus, anyone contesting the readings has a long way to go to defend themselves.

What also needs to be taken into account is that once the police/CPS show a driver's level is above the legal limit, the onus is then on the defendant to show the court, on the balance of probabilities, that his levels were in fact below the legal limit.

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IDFIMH

The countback can be 24 hours plus.

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IDFIMH