Tragic for all, all was young. Very sad.
I have started getting signed legal release for others then family and Close Friends when I take for ride in one of my cars particulay miners with Parents sign offs. You dont know what will happen even when your drive safe with others on the road. Sort of takes away the spotaneity. Besides for Death, law suits will take all that you have it found at fault, and your family with be left with nothing. I know this sounds harsh but its the real world these days.
Do these relase have legal value? I.e. if driver is driving recklessly or even just too fast vs speed llimit, will they stand up in court if family sues driver?
BBC : Ferrari death crash driver guilty of boy's death http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-43226196
No doubt Mr Cobden ''was tearful as he described how had not worn a seatbelt and had not asked Alexander [the 12 year old boy who was tragically killed] to put one on''. Put aside it was not Cobden's car, or that he did not have permission to take it for a drive, or that he was unwilling to drive the car with due care; the fact he did not ensure the belt was firmly on the little boy before his ride is unforgivable.
On a related note, regarding wrecking borrowed Ferraris, yesterday's Daily Mail had a story about a 28-year-old crashing his uncle's 458 spider while under the influence. Fortunately, without any fatalities. Maybe someone more talented than me, can post a link to the article.
What a tragic case, "GetSurrey" covered the recent court case closely. The car had just been transported down from Bruntingthorpe after being subject of a test for an article in Evo Magazine. Was later to be auctioned after just having been serviced, the journalist who drove it at the test said it behaved perfectly. However the defence argued that the car had a "latent defect" which led to the car over accelerating...... The couple and the young boy had been delivering a car battery to the storage company when the transporter with the F50 and a Porsche arrived. Life is fragile...... Latest ! Mr Cobden was found guilty today and will be sentenced on the 26th of March.
@ kevfla Mr Patel of Bolton, Greater Manchester wrote off his uncle's Ferrari 458 while high on cannabis. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5444787/Man-writes-uncles-Ferrari-driving-high.html PS.
If you are interested this goes into the technical arguments the defence put forward about faults in the car http://www.petrolhedonistic.com/fatal-ferrari-f50-crash-trial-vehicle-inspection-expert-witnesses-give-evidence/
A few weeks ago, coming out of my neighborhood in the 355 on a crisp morning I had a green and made a left [onto a 7 lane road] at maybe 30mph and my back end slid wide - I caught the slide at about 50º and snapped it back straight but it was shocking how fast and light it was. I was certainly under the 45mph limit. Michelin Pilot Sports are less than a year old. I also had an instance on the road when I first got the car where the throttle was not letting off completely - the carpet had come off it's clasp and was wedged a bit under the throttle. Of course, the unexplained part of his defense is, "If the throttle was out of control and the car was taking off, why didn't you push the clutch pedal in to put it in neutral?"
My understanding of this crash is that he spun it at about 40 and hit some kind of barrier on the side of a private road. The boy wasn’t wearing his seat belt and that led to his injuries. You can blame the car, and most likely it’s acceleration may have been a factor, but ultimately it’s the driver who had the responsibility to make sure his passenger was buckled.
And I'm sure that's what the jury thought. So fundamental, I don't see how any amount of technical argument mattered, at all. You can't get around that. Especially since the carbon tub does not appear compromised - if they were belted, the boy would probably have lived.
I think if it wasn’t a child he could have said that was the person’s choice. But as it was a child he invited into the car, it’s his responsibility .
A tragic event for everyone involved. The driver I would say though was mis advised not to admit guilt, clearly no one would set out to cause the end result, but he was the one behind the wheel and I could never see a jury letting him off as a result. How that poor mother is coping is any ones guess. Wide powerful car, narrow lane, skips sideways a bit under acceleration onto grass and its all over once it smacks the post.
There's a huge difference between civil negligence guilt and criminal guilt though. He's clearly negligence for a civil tort, it might have been a better angle to fight accepting conviction of a crime.
Would a jury of 12 ordinary people. who are non legal experts like most of us, have really found him not guilty though? having sat on a number of cases, human nature takes over for many in that room, and they wont be swayed by legal arguments. He was driving, he did not instruct the passenger (a minor) to wear their seatbelt, and he was the one at the wheel when the car lost control, what other outcome was there going to be? Common sense would have been to put your hands up, plead that it was a tragic accident and come away with a lesser sentence. I imagine he will have the book thrown at him now. To blame the car was grasping at straws.
The decisions of "twelve good men and true" have never ceased to amaze me, none more so than in the Casey Anthony trial.
If you look at the pictures of the crash site, and bear in mind that the driver had invited the child into the car and not insisted he wore a belt and then driven someone else's F50 at 40 down that narrow lane - the driver is an idiot, and he caused the death of a kid through his idiocy. It was also incredibly unlucky. The same idiot would in most circumstances just have hit a hedge or gone off road - while not wearing a seatbelt would still have been brutal, it might not have been fatal. As it stands, the car hit a big post and flipped - no roof, no seatbelts. And the poor kid just wanted a picture taken. The defence argument about a flaw that made six cylinders kick in sounds spurious - great detail in the post above. If you're taking someone else's child for a ride, you don't drive in such a way, and how can you not tell the kid to wear a belt? And it's not even your car and you don't have the owner's permission.
Sentence : 18 months in prison and 2 year driving ban + extended retest. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-43539579
Remember to wear your seatbelt. Even for a short trip. That's the lesson to be learned from this sad story.