We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Just because ‘Driving whilst blind’ is not an offense… A driver gets arrested for dangerous driving whilst… blind… and his lawyer, Timothy Gascoyne, argues that he should be acquitted because “the question is not whether his driving was dangerous, but whether being blind makes it dangerous”.
I am curious how many people in court were struggling to keep a straight face. Clearly Timothy Gascoyne missed his calling as a comedian!
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Puts some of us of a certain age
in mind of the Navy Lark.
Left hand down a bit.
Willy Wonka: So much time and so little to do. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.
Ah, but did he cause his blindness, or is it all society’s fault?
He is from Iraq and blinded by an explosion.
I feel sorry for the guy but its not really a joke is it, he could have easily killed someone.
Cultural enrichment some call it..
I call it cultural evolution in action…
What happened to the passenger, who was assisting him in his crime?
Best regards
Sounds like a movie plot to me.
What?
oh, rats!
Lawyers heh. Who else gets paid big bucks for talking crap.
Oh! just rememebered.
But was anybody hurt by his driving? No? Then we are in the realms of prosecuting people in the abstract, in a vacuum, not for doing anything identifiably and objectively wrong, but for behaving in a way that some find objectionable. Nothing new there, of course, the law’s been doing it for decades. Just a bit odd to see commentators on a site like this getting the teensiest bit of a bee in their bonnets about such a ‘criminal’ infraction.
I must disagree. For example firing off 30 rounds whilst drunk and exuberant whilst running down a high-street full of people should also be a criminal offense even if no one is actually shot and property is damaged.
Putting people in clear and present danger in such a manner is not acceptable just because someone was lucky and no one got hurt. The degree and probability of extra risk you impose on others without consent does matter. ‘driving whilst blind’ is no different. It is not ‘objectionable’, it is putting people in greatly increased danger of death or serious injury without so much as a “by your leave”.
Young Peregrin, you surprise me.
What about running down a crowded (or even uncrowded) escalator whilst morbidly obese?
It hardly compares to the imposed risk of driving a car down a public street whilst blind. Magnitude matters. For example going out in public with a cold is a reasonable imposed risk to others… doing so with plague is not. Common sense really.
Given the recent driving assaults in North Carolina and Seattle by Islamists, are we silly to think this might have been a practice run for a terrorist “incident”? A blind guy has a good cover for intentionally running down a few dozen infidels. Perhaps he was learning the directions to a soft target filled with pedestrians.
“It hardly compares to the imposed risk of driving a car down a public street whilst blind. Magnitude matters….”
Magnitude is also in the eye of the beholder. To a safety fetishist, car driving per se is a massively excessive imposed danger.
How is a crime of ‘dangerous driving’ different in principle to a crime of ‘dangerous behaviour’?
No. Magnitude is usually measurable (or at least best-guessable). How someone should then react to that magnitude of risk is ‘in the eye of the beholder’.
No doubt true but so what? To a safety fetishist everything must be controlled, but it does not therefore follow that if you are not a safety fetishist that nothing can therefore be an unacceptable imposed risk.
Many types of dangerous behaviour are unacceptable if they impose high levels of risk on others (with dangerous driving being a prime example). The key (in fact probably the only) issue here is how dangerous is a given type of behaviour to others who are exposed to it without prior consent?
A cold and plague are both diseases but they are also materially different in their natures and thus it is reasonable to use force to quarantine a person with plague but not a person with a cold, even though both are very infectious diseases. Likewise a fat man rushing down stairs is materially different to driving a vehicle producing a huge amount of kinetic energy down a public street.
The chap who drove down the motorway while a bit tired got 10 years for causing the Great Heck train crash. His level of negligence was clearly a lot lower than these imbeciles have exhibited.
So, what odds do we have on their jail sentences?
When replying, please do not take into account the religion of the perpetrators.
P de H: surely the basic premise of libertarianism is the understanding that, yes, there are many things that many people – often a majority – wish to control or manage or prohibit, but the fact that so many people wish such things does not make it right that the law reflects their wishes.
You point out that to a safety fetishist everything should be controlled, but I wonder why your version of what should and should not be controlled ought to take precedence.
This is basic ‘maths’. You know all of this. I can only imagine you have been metaphorically bludgeoned iby the occasional trimmers who visit this site into making arguments from ‘common sense’.
You do not, incidentally, say whether you think a crime of ‘dangerous behaviour’ ought to be introduced (although impliedly, you appear to agree with the notion).
And colds can kill, too. Magnitude is in the eye of the octogenarian or AIDS victim who comes into contact with your bogies.
Beacuse I think my theories are better, of course, which is why I formed a critical prefernce for them 😛 It is also why I am so in favour of private property, that way I can ban whatever sort of behaviour I like on my property. In public spaces, I am sadly left with using politics like everyone else. What I am never going to do however is accept greatly elevated clear and present dangers being imposed on me because a blind man wants to drive a car.
You seem to be assuming that liberty requires chaos. In fact chaos is a state in which civilisation fails and laws, be they state laws or privatley enforced ones, are the basis of civilisation… and you cannot have liberty of more than the crudest sort without civilisation.
If you do not have a mechanism of rules for governing things like public roads (roads on which the public travels, regardless of who owns them), then the alternative is the more immediate use of force when people act in ways you did not expect and do not like. In short, people will simply shoot at each other to defend themselves from imposed threats.
No ‘anarchist’ with any sense argue for a society without rules, they argue for a society without rules imposed by a state… but rules will appear regardless of who is imposing them.
Almost as stupid as this(Link) specimen …
This whole thing is silly — why, of course it’s silly; that’s the point.
In the event Aziz was, if the constables are to be believed, ‘driving dangerously’ inasmuch as the motions of the vehicle he was conducting appeared to have been objectively unsafe. Aziz’ blindness is admissible to impeach his credibility to the extent he contested the constables’ version of events.
But if the attorney’s assertion — that Aziz was arrested and charged solely because he was blind, then, unless there’s a law against operating a vehicle whilst subject to a physical deficit,* then, the attorney’s argument seems sound to me.
* Operating a vehicle without a license is quite another matter.
Apparently, Edward Lud, you don’t believe in mutual contracts with terms. While the highway funding mechanism is decidedly flawed, the terms of acquiring a license to pilot a vehicle on them is one of agreement between operators and their insurance companies as exercised through the (again, flawed) mechanism of the state. The entire license testing process is designed to make sure holders of licenses know, and are capable of obeying, the rules for safe sharing of the roadways.
You are entirely welcome to start your own highway cooperative that issues licenses on the basis of what people need or want rather than on their agreement with the other operators, but the people who fund the highways we have now have spoken.
(If you are attacking the funding or administration mechanism, that is an entirely different and legitimate concern.)
Midwesterner, to the extent that this Blind Ali was contravening the terms of his insurance, and was thus in breach of contract, then naturally I fully support the right of his insurance company to sue on that basis. To the extent that we have publicly-funded roads and one doesn’t contract so much as one’s behaviour is intermediated and governed, or managed, there is no issue of contract – but then as you anticipate, I am no supporter of publicly-funded roads.
And Peregrine, you still have not said if you think there should be a law against ‘dangerous behaviour’…
I have no idea who you are talking to.
So apparently you think he can required to abide by the requirement to have insurance, but not by the other requirements for having a license?
You argument seems to be premised on the belief that my safety is something you can wantomly and recklessly steal from me? Or perhaps you believe that my consent to your theft of my safety is unneccessary; that, indeed, my safety is the collective property of society?
Wikipedia says of reckless endangerment –
Edward Lud, I suspect you are a collectivist troll looking for some entertainment. I can find no consistancy in your case except perhaps for one of partial anarchy. One where anarchic individuals are required to carry insurance.
Me, a collectivist? Sir, I demand satisfaction. My second will be in touch…
In the meantime:
So far as having a licence is concerned, what business does the state have in predicating my contractual relations on its say-so?
As to whether or not I can actually steal your safety, what does that actually mean?
I can steal your wallet, or your car, or your girlfriend. But the notion of ‘stealing safety’ is subjectivist metaphysics. Completely meaningless.
I couldn’t give a toss what Wikipedia says on the subject. Adducing an ‘authority’ in subject of a proposition indicates the absence of logical argument.
I am not an anarchist. I just abhor managerial, subjective pseudo-criminal law.
And while we’re on the subject of safety being the collective ‘property’ of society, insofar as that can be the case, it is only under statist legislation such as that relating to ‘dangerous driving’.
The common criminal law is, was, perfectly capable of dealing with those who harm, or who set out to harm others, or who were reckless about so doing, long before this managerial tripe was legislated for.
There is nothing subjective about imposing risk however. If you drive down a crowded street on the wrong side of the road with your eyes closed, you are not ‘stealing safety’, you are quite objectively imposing risk (a lot of it) on people.
True, but that does nor really change what I wrote.
Wiki was not given as an authority, but as a definition to make sure we were talking about the same thing.
You can argue what constitutes ‘safety’ with statistical analysis and debate what rise in probability constitutes unsafe, but to make your case, you have to take a very Muslim view that we cannot effect our futures and whatever happens is ‘the will of Allah’ and not the consequences of our choices.
Needless to say, that’s crap.
If you are not willing to believe that choices have consequential results, we have no epistemological basis for further discussion.
If you are willing to believe that choices have consequential results, then you should agree that to the degree they can be predicted, we are accountable for the consequences of our choices.
I notice that you must be unable to make your case convincingly without resorting to attacking the structure of road ownerships and usage licensing. The case I made, that you are ignoring, is that roads and their usage is an imperfect cooperative and on this basis it may regulate the actions of its members.
I said in my very first post on this thread,
If you cannot make any case other than the (admittedly large) problems in how this coop is funded and administered, quit wasting my time.
Beep Beep da Beep Beep
Where?
Almost The Beatles.
Ah, but, Perry: you can be prosecuted for dangerous driving even if the street is not crowded.
The reason this ‘crime’ is subjectivist is because unlike, say, theft, it cannot be defined other than in the given situation. We might all agree that a blind man getting behind the wheel and driving is dangerous, or potentially dangerous. It may, for that matter, turn out to be perfectly safe (hypothetically), but unlike theft the driver in question cannot necessarily say in advance that dangerous driving is what he is about to do.
Also, you perform a subtle semantic shift: you criticise my picking up Midwesterner for use of the phrase ‘stealing safety’ and then move smoothly towards yourself using the phrase ‘imposing risk’. They are two different things. And we all impose risk everytime we get behind the wheel of a car.
You still have not said whether you think there should be a crime of ‘dangerous behaviour’.
Midwesterner, yes of course we are accountable for the consequences of our choices. The point about the law on dangerous driving (one of many, anyway) is that it is prosecutable in the absence of any consequences. It exists in the abstract and defendants are thereby held to account not (necessarily) for the consequences of their actions but because they have behaved in a manner which post facto is deemed in court to have contravened a law which evolves by the given case.
I remain surprised by libertarian contributors to this site supporting this law.
For the record, I support prosecuting those who cause harm, or who intend to cause harm, or (in certain circumstances) are reckless about doing so. But don’t get shirty with me because you can’t distinguish managerial law from that which genuinely holds people to account for pre-definable offences involving criminal intent. Browbeating and use of words like ‘epistemological’ don’t cut the mustard.
Finally, I think I am right to say that reckless endangerment is actually an American usage. It would seem to have much the same meaning as ‘dangerous’ in the context of driving and, if so, is as baseless a foundation for criminal prosecutions.
Finally, finally, my attack on the structure of road ownership was not the basis for my critique so much as a point of agreement with what you had impliedly suggested.
Me – The common criminal law is, was, perfectly capable of dealing with those who harm, or who set out to harm others, or who were reckless about so doing, long before this managerial tripe was legislated for.
PdeH – True, but that does nor really change what I wrote.
But it goes to the heart of my point: what Blind Ali did may well be something that should be prosecutable. The problem I raise is not whether he should be held to account for his behaviour, but the manner in which it is done.
Does your preposterous argument also carry for someone who chooses to play Russian roulette with your head. Presumably, if the hammer drops on an empty chamber, no crime. Right?
Midwesterner, the correct analogy would be with someone who aimed a moving car at me.
You continue to miss the point about the abstract and inconsequential nature of the ‘crime’ of dangerous driving.
No. Your argument is inconsistent and untenable.
There is no philosophical difference between taking an action with a gun that kills 16 and 2/3s percent of the time, and taking an action with a car that carries the same risk.
There is no philosophical difference. It is only a matter of degree. The only way you can make your case is by denying dangerous driving ever causes injury.
And this is, in fact, what you do –
Angels, pinheads.
Edward Lud is an intellectual troll.
Silence.
If he’s a troll, he’s a modestly useful one for clarifying a case.
I think more likely, he’s energetic, idealistic and simplistic. That’s only a crime if you aren’t growing and learning.
He’s put up a web site and is trying to make a change. Good for him!
Dangerous driving (with or without consequence) should be a crime for precisely the reasons Perry states.
However, I live in Taiwan – and here the very idea of criminalising dangerous driving is past the point even of ridicule – it is simply unthinkable. Everybody here drives like a blind man or an idiot intent on becoming a dead man. If such a law was to be implemented consistently, the police would have to stop every second or third car or motorcycle they see every day.
It is not merely the absence of criminal law – there is a criminal law – it is just its’ complete failure to regulate the behaviour of Taiwanese drivers.
So though I don’t agree with Edward Lud, the fact that he posits a world where dangerous driving per se is not a crime makes me think of my own daily, waking nightmare.
The thing is as well, it’s not merely the insurance side of things that makes me angry – it’s the sheer psychopathic lunacy of someone with absolutely no consideration for others that gets my goat. I mean, if someone hits my motorcycle after driving like a man with his head screwed on backwards then I’m less likely to think about money for repairs than I am to think about blame and retribution.
If you are not prepared to accept others imposing needless and potentially life-threatening risks on you through the dangerous manner in which they drive, you can, in the UK, take down their registration number and take your complaint to the police (or the DVLA?).
In Taiwan (and China) this is not possible. They would think you were mad! In recent months I have taken more and more to a fantasy I have of buying up wheel locks and proceeding to lock the wheels of those vehicles whose drivers piss me off – either because they made me skid in the rain so that I fall off my motorcycle or because they’ve done some other act of mind-bending studpidity.
What is a libertarian to do in a case like this?!!?
Midwesterner, if it’s only a matter of degree, why not ban cars?
You go on to say that, “The only way you can make your case is by denying dangerous driving ever causes injury”, which I do not (I merely pointed out that it is prosecutable in the absence of harm, which is not the same assertion), and which accusation in any event totally misses my point.
I was under the impression that I had said in terms that it should (and indeed is, under the common law) perfectly possible – and I might add, desirable – to prosecute where there is an intent to cause harm, or where harm is caused.
The legitimacy of this point does not rest on saying that dangerous driving never causes injury. Whether or not it causes injury is totally irrelevant to discussion of the validity of this type of legislation.
It seems to me all the more bizarre that I am accused of ‘simplicity’ (incidentally, this is a common allegation made of libertatarianism which, as a unifying theory seems to be alien to my critics on this site who take as their starting point the same position as statists, viz. that ‘public policy’, or some such other euphemism, justify their own personal starting point for intervention of the preferred sort) when those arguing for the contra seem incapable of making the least complex of distinctions between managerial law and principled law.
And why is this not a matter of angels and, ahem, pinheads?
Why does it matter that law is framed in principled terms rather than in terms of ends justifying means?
Do I really need to answer this? What, really?
Then let me once more throw down the gauntlet that Perry de Havilland has been so unwilling to pick up: if you support the framing of prosecutions for putting people at risk with their cars in terms of ‘dangerous driving’, do you, any of you, support the introduction of a law against ‘dangerous behaviour’?
Perhaps a more interesting question is the point raised by mike: what, indeed, is a libertarian to do in a case such as this?
I concede readily that lunatic drivers make a mockery of the idea of personal responsibility, but the point about holding people to account for breaching objectively-defined law is that such mockery is punished where intent to cause harm, or causing harm, are properly punished.
One problem with managerial law, as with so much of our lawmaking, is that it’s a bugger’s muddle, reconciling soft-left concern that prison ‘does not work’ with diminishing utmost due process in the interests of securing easier convictions; the tabloids and the gullible are thereby easily appeased, but little else of substance is achieved and moral vacuousness is encouraged by legal norms that fail to identify and properly punish blame where it is due.
That may be idealistic (but then, why else are we writing here?). It may be simplistic. I’d go further: it is simplistic, but so what? Whether it’s energetic, I could not say.
But I stand by my claim that it matters how an allegation of wrong doing is framed, and that if you cannot frame it in objective, pre-defined terms, that probably indicates that on the facts of the given case the court should not be seised of the matter.
And putting someone in reasonable fear of life and limb is not ‘harm’? Just because you do not run someone over, that does not mean recklessly endangering someone is behaviour that must be tolerated. Quite why you cannot see this is a bit of a mystery to me.
Dangerous only to the one undertaking the behavior? No.
The possible harmful consequences of an action can be objectively measured through statistics and probability (as Perry said, I believe). The threshold between “undangerous” and “dangerous” is subjective (again, I believe this was said before). I cannot really conceive of the type of system where no law can rest, even a little, on subjective judgments. Making a credible (determining credibility requires a subjective evaluation of objective facts) threat to another is against the law, since it is a commitment to breach another person’s right to life in the future. If threats were not illegal, then pointing a gun with the intent to kill them would not be lawfully stoppable until the instant the bullet reaches a person. This is an unavoidable grey area. In this case, the threat is not intentional, but real and objective because the driver is physically incapable* of driving to the minimum of standards set forth for the safety among individuals in public spaces. These “minimum standards” can reach an objectively defined level through the uniformity of state-given license tests taken in order to lawfully operate a vehicle on public roads. The level at which to set the minimum is determined subjectively, by an agreement among individuals as to what is an acceptable level of probability for a threat to life. Again, such agreements, it seems clear, are unavoidable.
Therefore, since the threat is credible, owing to the inability of the driver to possibly reach the standards for danger, then the prosecution is legitimate.
I suppose if one were to purchase an atomic bomb, but only store it in his yard, then, according to your logic, it would be wholly legal?
Like it or not, subjective agreements for things like danger must be reached among individuals in a society. Otherwise, clear and credible threats are legal, and individuals could be compelled by the threat of force, which is obviously a violation of their liberties. Sure, one could ignore the threat, die, and hope the perpetrator gets caught. In such a system there is no legal safeguard for one’s own liberty, but impermeable legal protection for those who clearly wish to violate others’. If you believe that the threshold is too high, then persuade others and get the law changed. I believe in cases like these, the emphasis should be placed on maximizing liberty, keeping in mind possible harm that would take it away.
*I say this, not taking into account some sort of technology that would enable a blind person to drive a car at the level of a normal person.
Perry, putting someone in reasonable fear of life and limb is called ‘assault’ in English law (‘battery’ is commonly referred to, understandably enough, as assault). It is prosecutable as such and has been since at least 1861. I am surprised that even you miss my point. I cannot see how I might have expressed it any more clearly.
Alfred makes a similar point to Perry when he says, “If threats were not illegal, then pointing a gun with the intent to kill them would not be lawfully stoppable until the instant the bullet reaches a person”.
Aaarrghghg.
Look. Threats are prosecutable. Have been since God was a lad. If the Crown wants to prosecute Blind Ali, fine: but let it establish intent, or recklessness and duly charge assault (i.e. putting someone in fear of immediate physical danger). If the Crown thinks its evidence stacks up higher than that, then let it charge assault (i.e. battery), or attempted assault.
Criminality is nothing without the requisite state of mind. Ill intent. Recklessness at least. Maybe Blind Ali would be potted on that very basis. Dunno, it’s a matter for a jury.
But ‘dangerous driving’ is not a qualitative judgment about the evidence of Blind Ali’s ill intent, its a qualitative judgment about whether the act – the act, mind, regardless of his state of mind – can qualify as dangerous. This is post facto lawmaking. You know theft when you see it. Dangerous driving is decided when it’s brought before a court.
The atomic bomb point, made by Alfred, is an interesting one, for several reasons. First the availability of nuclear material is patently a national security issue and I personally have no difficulty with government policing the availability of such material. National security, per my earlier chastisement of so-called libertarians drawing their own personal lines in the sand re. what others may be allowed to do, national security is my line in the sand.
Anyway, even if government were not to police the availability of this material, your next door neighbour could – it would mean an extension of the common law in practice, if not in principle – bring a private prosecution (or, if you really want, the state can do it on his behalf) for assault, that is, putting someone in fear of immediate physical danger.
Blind Ali has been prosecuted absent harm caused. He has been prosecuted absent the requirement to prove that he intended harm, or was reckless thereby. That is not criminal law. Or at least, it ought not to be. Its theocratic intermediation.
Quite. And if I was on that jury, I would most likely vote to convict on that basis. So what exactly is the problem?
I can theorise some set of highly improbably but technically possible conditions in which Blind Ali might navigate the roads safely and therefore not be driving dangerously, but in reality it is hard to see how a blind man driving on a public road does not pose an intolerable risk to the general public.
So what exactly is the problem?
I refer the honourable gent. to the answer I gave some time ago, viz:
“Why does it matter that law is framed in principled terms rather than in terms of ends justifying means?…
“One problem with managerial law, as with so much of our lawmaking, is that it’s a bugger’s muddle, reconciling soft-left concern that prison ‘does not work’ with diminishing utmost due process in the interests of securing easier convictions; the tabloids and the gullible are thereby easily appeased, but little else of substance is achieved and moral vacuousness is encouraged by legal norms that fail to identify and properly punish blame where it is due…
“But I stand by my claim that it matters how an allegation of wrong doing is framed, and that if you cannot frame it in objective, pre-defined terms, that probably indicates that on the facts of the given case the court should not be seised of the matter.”
Process is important.
“…it is hard to see how a blind man driving on a public road does not pose an intolerable risk to the general public.”
Yes, indeed. But if he is not to be prosecuted for harm caused, then he should be prosecuted for his intent to cause harm.
‘Dangerous driving’ does not (necessarily) achieve that end.
And incidentally, where ‘causing death by dangerous driving’ is charged, the consequences, per public outrage of oft reported cases, for the perpetrator are less severe than would be the case were GBH with intent, for instance, charged. So much for punishing wrongdoing.
And another thing:
Me: “I merely pointed out that it is prosecutable in the absence of harm”
Perry: “And putting someone in reasonable fear of life and limb is not ‘harm’? ”
Your objection, old chap, is a non-sequitur since it does not deal with my point that ‘it is prosecutable in the absence of harm’, but instead simply raises a different concern, namely that harm can derive from less obvious causes than anyone, me included, had hitherto considered. Of course it can, but that does not alter the fact the ‘dangerous driving’ is prosecutable in the absence of harm, and in the absence of an intent to cause harm.
And driving whilst blind strikes me as damn near the perfect example of wilful negligence. I suspect he was not doing it by accident.
If it was indeed dangerous, then yes it does… if it not in fact pose a serious risk to others, then is was not dangerous driving at all.
You make a very simple issue insanely complex, which obscures some very simple truths. Driving whilst blind poses a huge risk to other people under almost any plausible conditions. Any accident involving others is harm, and any substantial increase in potentially fatal risk to others is harm. My contention is arguing that driving whilst blind under the direction of another does not constitute putting others unreasonably at risk, as the lawyer argued, is preposterous. It really is that simple.
How many blind darts players does it take to clear a bar-room?
Mr Lud, May I refer you to Smith & Hogan, the Criminal Law, chapter 14 (in my version anyway) Road Traffic Offences
They will walk you through from Careless through Reckless all the way to Dangerous Driving, and the legal reasoning behind such Laws, in terms that are as plain as the nose on your face.
Er well, not if you’re blind obviously!
It’s your theory that’s simple, not your arguments to support it. They are hopelessly convoluted and jury rigged. (pun intended)
Firing a gun in the air in at an athletic event runs a high probability of directly harming someone. By your rules, we would have to establish intent to harm, identify which person it is that may be harmed, and further prove that he felt threatened or no charge could be made.
This is what is called a program patch to fix a flawed argument.
Crying out loud, driving while blind is ‘reckless thereby’. Enough with the pseudo legal lingo. You seem to be having enough trouble without confusing your case further.
As Yogi Berra said, ‘It was like deja vu all over again’. I’ve been trying to recognize why the tone of this debate is so familiar. I now know. It was with a young aquaintance of mine that had done something really stupid with a car and gotten caught. He was trying like anything to make it everybody’s fault but his. One long anthem of “I didn’t do anything wrong!” and “Nobody got hurt, did they?” Have you been penalized for ‘dangerous driving’, Edward?
Gosh, I’m both simple (Midwesterner) and insanely complex (Perry).
Have I been penalized (sic) for ‘dangerous driving’?
No, but I defend people on such charges and I see the distinction in the criminal process between the way in which their trials are largely foregone conclusions, and the way in which a trial for assault is not (putting aside questions of the merit of the individual defence) a foregone conclusion.
But you will all be pleased to hear that I give up with this argument (hoists panto bosom in indignation). You all continue to avoid the points I have made to an extent which makes me wonder if you are not in fact friends of mine masquerading as unknown bloggers so you can wind me up; in other words I do you all the courtesy of assuming that you are not really as obtuse as your observations would otherwise incline me to believe was the case.
Adieu.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/penalized
Another Americanism, although I dare say that spelling was more common in this country in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Another Americanism, although I dare say that spelling was more common in this country in the 18th and 19th centuries.