DRIVERS who cause fatal crashes while using a mobile phone or eating a sandwich could be jailed for up to five years. Motorists who kill while driving without a licence or disqualified face the same punishment under government proposals announced yesterday.

The measures are intended to close a loophole in the law that allows people who are not charged with causing death by dangerous driving to escape with a fine if someone dies in an accident.

The plans are also intended to meet mounting anger from road safety campaigners and the families of crash victims that the Government is failing to take deaths on the roads seriously. Offences of causing death by careless driving and causing death while disqualified or without a driving licence would be created. Each offence would carry a maximum jail term of five years.

At present anyone who kills on the road can be jailed only if convicted of manslaughter or causing death by dangerous driving, which carries a maximum 14-year jail term, or driving under the influence of drink or drugs. Anyone who is charged with careless driving, even if someone is killed, can receive only a maximum fine of £2,500. The courts will also be required to take serious injuries into account when sentencing in road traffic cases.

Baroness Scotland of Astha, a junior Home Office minister, said the proposals were intended to create a tougher legal framework to deal with bad driving. “Although the maximum 14-year sentence is available for dangerous drivers who kill, the courts have only been able to hand a fine to careless drivers who kill. Various campaign groups have lobbied hard about the big gap between these sentences.”

Lady Scotland added: “If you were chatting away on your mobile and not looking where you were going, or eating a sandwich at the time, and you kill somebody it is very hard for the person whose family member is dead to be told you were just being careless and thoughtless.”

The consultation paper also said that some less serious motoring offences such as driving while disqualified should be dealt with by greater use of non-custodial sentences.

Motorists without insurance or a licence who are involved in a crash where there is no injury or fatality would receive a community penalty for their first and second offences. Lady Scotland said: “We want to look at the pattern of offending behaviour that has caused these offences and fashion the punishments more accurately to that behaviour.”

Handing offenders a sentence of electronic tagging or community work may be more effective punishment than jail the consultation paper said.

The new offences of bad driving could create a need for an extra 800 prison places. Kevin Clinton, the head of road safety at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, said: “RoSPA is very pleased to see proposals to introduce new offences to deal with such behaviour and hopes this process will include better guidance to the prosecuting authorities to ensure that appropriate charges are levelled at offenders.”

Government officials admit that causing death by dangerous driving is a crime that creates particular difficulties because it involves someone’s death without the offender deliberately setting out to kill.

The consultation will end on May 6.

HIGH TOLL OF MOTORING

35,000 killed or injured on roads annually in Britain

58 homicides between 1997 and 2001 in England and Wales where method of killing was “struck by a motor vehicle”. Four convictions for murder and 27 for manslaughter; 16 acquittals

273 convictions for death by dangerous driving in 2003 in England and Wales

66 convictions for death by careless driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs in 2003

6,788 convictions for dangerous driving in 2003

31,690 convictions for careless driving in 2003

Causing death by careless driving

Disqualified driver steals car, jumps red light, hits another car killing a child

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