Overall jail terms for dangerous drivers who kill are still too low

Ms McCarragher was aged only 19 when she was struck by a hit-and-run driver in Armagh in 2016. Nathan Finn, 20, was sentenced to nine years, half of it in prison, half on licence, for the death.

He was aged 17 and racing another car when he drove into a hard shoulder to undertake the other vehicle striking Ms McCarragher and throwing her into the air. Finn drove off and did not help, apparently because he was panicking at having no licence. At first he denied being the responsible driver. Finn did later admit what he had done.

This was not therefore a case of someone going a bit faster than they should have done, or momentarily losing concentration. This was an extremely serious, calculated piece of reckless driving which led to him knocking down a young woman who was out jogging, and after which he did not stop to help. He did not just deny his culpability for a few hours or for a day or two but for a fortnight.

His sentence of nine years was yesterday cut to eight. This is not a large reduction. And it is only fair to note that sentences for such despicable driving have been moving up in recent decades. But the point is that the baseline for these sentences is still too low.

The Appeal Court said yesterday that his sentence was “out of kilter” with prison terms imposed in other fatal driving cases. Perhaps so but if overall sentence ranges were higher it would not be.

There is a simple point here. If anyone of any age gets behind a vehicle and deliberately drives it for a sustained period of time in a fashion that could well lead to someone being killed, given the multiple obstacles that there will always be on roads, they must be in no doubt that they will be in jail for more than four years. They have, after all, eliminated someone else’s very existence.