Car insurance: Guidelines suggested by SGC

Wednesday, 09 January 2008

Drivers who are guilty of causing death on the roads after losing concentration could be set to escape going to prison under new guidelines from the Sentencing Guidelines Council (SGC).

It is believed that the organisation will ask that community penalties are handed out to drivers in these situations, reports the BBC.

A death by careless driving charge was given Royal Assent in 2006 but is yet to be officially brought in.

But the plans from the SGC were made with opposition from Brake's Lorna Jackson, who stated that such measures may be too lenient on the offenders.

"Obviously if there are some really persuasive mitigating circumstances then that could be reduced down to a community sentence. But we really do want to see the custodial sentence as the starting point," she told the news source.

Both the SGC and the Sentencing Advisory Panel give out sentencing guidelines to English and Welsh courts.

The latter has said that a community sentence should be handed out for cases that are not that serious of careless driving.

And the SGC says that consistency should be encouraged in courts in the stated countries.

Drivers involved in collisions could find that their car insurance premiums are affected.

Car insurance - the cheapest on average

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