Book reviews

Andrew Brown
PUBLISHER: Tottel
ISBN: 1 84592 293 1

PRICE: £60

As a result of the pressures and constraints of the judicial bench, Lord Wheatley has felt obliged to pass on the mantle of preparing the fourth edition of his Road Traffic Law in Scotland to Andrew Brown, advocate.

The major legislative changes that have been introduced in the seven years since the previous edition of this well established source of reference arise from the Road Safety Act, which received royal assent in November 2006.

The latest edition deals with the new offences introduced by the Act, and also with the significant alterations being made to the nature of the penalties available to the courts and to driver and vehicle licensing.

The most radical of the new measures is the introduction of the new s 2B offence of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving, which will carry a maximum term of imprisonment of six months on summary complaint and five years on indictment. The Act further creates the new s 3ZB offence of causing death while unlicensed, disqualified or uninsured, which will also carry a maximum of six months on summary complaint, although the maximum custodial sentence on indictment will be restricted to two years.

These somewhat controversial measures are clearly being introduced in response to media and political pressures and to meet the demands of road safety campaigners. The question of causation of death will inevitably become much more of an issue and subject to much more thorough investigation in cases brought under the new legislation. There were 314 road deaths in Scotland in 2006, a 10% increase on the previous year. It remains to be seen whether implementation of the new measures will help to redress the trend.

It had been anticipated that most of the measures introduced by the 2006 Act would be in force by the end of 2007, but deliberations over how a number of the changes should be applied in the courts south of the border are holding matters up and it will now be some time in 2008 before a number of the provisions come into force. The delay should at least afford practitioners more time to familiarise themselves with the changes, and the bench will no doubt welcome the assistance of guidelines which are to be issued on how they are to be applied in the courts in England & Wales.

The fourth edition also deals with the considerable developments in case law in recent years and with the continuing impact of the Convention of Human Rights. It also covers the legislation introduced since the last edition in relation to mobile phones. The practitioner who “phones a friend” in order to check on the likely penalty facing his client on a careless driving charge, while driving to court, will in future run the risk of three obligatory penalty points of his own, and indeed disqualification if the sheriff chooses to exercise his discretion. But then, he would be only too aware of the consequences of such folly if he were to enrich himself with a copy of the latest edition of Wheatley.

While the book is greatly enlarged since it was first published some 18 years ago, the framework follows the pattern of earlier editions. Andrew Brown has done it justice in bringing the book up to date. He leaves practitioners seeking justice in respect of road traffic offences with no alternative but to acquire their own copy of the fourth edition.

Dominic Bayne, Andersons LLP