fair sentencing?
Last Saturday, Jan 19th, my Aunt Jude and her partner Randall were riding their motorcycles over to the west coast for the weekend. About 3/4 of the way there they were hit by a spanish tourist who was driving on the wrong side of the road.
They (especially Jude) shouldn't be alive apparently, but they are. Randy escaped with a broken arm, collarbone and a lot of gravel burn. Jude broke both legs, one arm and the other arm is badly bruised and sprained. Neither of them have any internal or head injuries. Phew.
Jude has had several surgeries so far, basically reattaching one foot, closing the torn-open leg and installing one of those external frame thingies to hold her leg together while it heals. She has more surgeries remaining yet, so they're keeping her in an induced coma until its all over.
There have been a couple of small articles in the newspaper and one on the tv3 website about it, though no-one has mentioned the extent of Jude's injuries, and the latest one I saw had details of the sentencing of the tourist.
http://www.tv3.co.nz/News/Touristfinedfordrivingonwrongsideandhittingmotorcyclists/tabid/209/articleID/44044/cat/41/Default.aspx
Okay, so here's where I get mad. If you look at the bottom of the page, there are comments from a couple of readers, the bottom one asking a question I had in my mind already, so I decided to find out.
I emailed the Spanish Embassy in Wellington and asked whether the driving disqualification would be upheld by Spanish authorities when the tourist returned home and recieved this reply:
"The disqualification will not apply in Spain as there is not an agreement between the Spanish Goverment and the New Zealand Goverment in Traffic Law matters."
So why the hell did the judge even bother with disqualifying him? Keeping up appearances?? What other reason could there be?
I'm so furious about it thaat I'm on the edge of calling the TV station myself and making sure that detail is made public. Tonight I'm going to talk to the family and find out why details of Jude's condition have not been mentioned so I know whether or not to bring it up myself.
So angry i want to explode.
:(
They (especially Jude) shouldn't be alive apparently, but they are. Randy escaped with a broken arm, collarbone and a lot of gravel burn. Jude broke both legs, one arm and the other arm is badly bruised and sprained. Neither of them have any internal or head injuries. Phew.
Jude has had several surgeries so far, basically reattaching one foot, closing the torn-open leg and installing one of those external frame thingies to hold her leg together while it heals. She has more surgeries remaining yet, so they're keeping her in an induced coma until its all over.
There have been a couple of small articles in the newspaper and one on the tv3 website about it, though no-one has mentioned the extent of Jude's injuries, and the latest one I saw had details of the sentencing of the tourist.
http://www.tv3.co.nz/News/Touristfinedfordrivingonwrongsideandhittingmotorcyclists/tabid/209/articleID/44044/cat/41/Default.aspx
Okay, so here's where I get mad. If you look at the bottom of the page, there are comments from a couple of readers, the bottom one asking a question I had in my mind already, so I decided to find out.
I emailed the Spanish Embassy in Wellington and asked whether the driving disqualification would be upheld by Spanish authorities when the tourist returned home and recieved this reply:
"The disqualification will not apply in Spain as there is not an agreement between the Spanish Goverment and the New Zealand Goverment in Traffic Law matters."
So why the hell did the judge even bother with disqualifying him? Keeping up appearances?? What other reason could there be?
I'm so furious about it thaat I'm on the edge of calling the TV station myself and making sure that detail is made public. Tonight I'm going to talk to the family and find out why details of Jude's condition have not been mentioned so I know whether or not to bring it up myself.
So angry i want to explode.
:(
posted by Jen at 5:23 PM
1 Comments:
Yes, probably so it is
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