ABSTRACT
The ultimate harm that the criminal law is seeking to prevent in criminalizing risk-taking in the form of bad driving with the offences discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 is that of death. Harm falling short of death, such as serious bodily harm, is equally in need of prevention, but there are no specic offences of causing bodily harm by means of driving (with the exception of wanton and furious driving under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, discussed briey in Chapter 2) and any cases where a collision has resulted in harm falling short of death will have to be prosecuted for the relevant endangerment offence according to the circumstances of the case. Dangerous driving or careless driving causing serious harm is likely to attract harsher penalties than instances of those offences where some lesser harm is caused, given that the Magistrates’ Court Sentencing Guidelines suggest that ‘serious injury or damage is capable of being aggravation’ (Magistrates’ Association 2004, 67-8), but D’s conviction will not reect the fact that serious harm has been caused and will be indistinguishable in offence label from cases where a risk has been created but has not materialized. In contrast, because of the signicance that humans attach to the ending of life, the law has dealt separately with drivers who kill.
