THE CASE of a Dundee drink driver whose own solicitor accepted that he was lucky not to have killed someone is a prime example of the need for specialist courts to deal with driving offences, a prominent road safety campaigner told The Courier yesterday.

The 24-year-old was speeding and struck a lamppost, causing his car to turn over three times before coming to rest after hitting a tree.

Frighteningly, he was on his way to buy more drink and had a seven-month-old baby and two 16-year-old girls in the car at the time.

The man appeared at Dundee Sheriff Court last week and admitted driving carelessly and speeding with more than twice the permitted level of alcohol in his system. He was fined £500 and banned for 21 months on the drink-driving charge, and was admonished for careless driving.

Though eyebrows may be raised that he was charged with careless rather than dangerous driving, Isobel Brydie, from Scotland’s Campaign against Irresponsible Driving (SCID), said there is no objective test to differentiate between the two.

She added that it is often difficult to secure a conviction on the more serious offence.

“The criteria for dangerous driving are, really, how long is a piece of string?” she explained.

“It is very difficult to prove the difference between careless and dangerous driving because there is no objectivity, it is purely someone’s interpretation.”

That makes it all the more important that everyone dealing with driving offences has extensive experience of such cases, she said.

“We have always advocated that there should be special courts for road traffic offences so that investigators, prosecutors and sentences can build up expertise,” Mrs Brydie continued.

“That way, I think we could get a much more level playing field.”

In addition, she added, sheriffs and judges have very little scope within the Road Traffic Act when it comes to sentencing— something SCID would like to see changed. In particular, with regard to drink drivers, the campaign would like to see background information provided routinely on offenders before they were sentenced.

“At the moment, drink drivers are all lumped together, but there are different reasons for drink driving and where somebody takes the risk of having three children in a car and is desperate to buy more alcohol that may indicate an alcohol problem.

“Of course, I would not suggest that is necessarily the case here but we have always said that there are three different types of drink driver and they need to be dealt with differently.

“There are people who are just over the limit where a ban might be enough to stop a second offence.

“The second category are those who in general have no regard for the law.

“Then there are those who have an alcohol problem.

“They really need to be treated differently and sheriffs ought to be able to include in a sentence the condition that they attend alcohol counselling services and also prove that they have overcome their alcohol problem before they get a licence back.”