R v Gosney
[1971] 2 QB 674
Independent editorial summary — not the official judgment. Read the full judgment via the source link.
Ratio Decidendi
Driving in a manner dangerous to the public was not an absolute offence: fault on the part of the driver was a necessary ingredient. A conviction required not only a situation which, viewed objectively, was dangerous, but also some fault of the driver causing that situation.
Facts
The defendant was seen driving at about 30 mph in the wrong direction along a one-way section of the A2. Her case was that she was without fault: she was unfamiliar with the road and said there was no sign indicating that the turn she had taken was prohibited or that she was travelling the wrong way. The facts are only thinly documented in freely available sources; this outline follows a Bar Association of Queensland journal account of the case.
Judgment Summary
The Court of Appeal rejected the proposition that dangerous driving was an offence of strict liability and held that fault was a necessary ingredient of the offence. The decision changed the law as it had previously been applied: in R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8 the Supreme Court recalled Ramsden [1972] Crim LR 547, "where a defendant who had been convicted of dangerous driving, before Gosney (1971) 55 Cr App R 502 had held that fault was a necessary ingredient of the offence, was refused leave to appeal out of time after that latter decision had been published". Fault in this context did not require deliberate misconduct or recklessness, but a falling below the standard of a competent and experienced driver that caused the objectively dangerous situation.
Subsequent Treatment
Cited by the Supreme Court in R v Jogee [2016] UKSC 8 (quoted in R v Johnson [2016] EWCA Crim 1613 at [12]) as the decision which "had held that fault was a necessary ingredient of the offence" of dangerous driving; the refusal of out-of-time leave in Ramsden [1972] Crim LR 547 following Gosney is the Supreme Court's standard illustration of the practice on change-of-law appeals.
The offence of dangerous driving is now statutorily defined in objective fault terms: current CPS guidance describes it as "driving falling far below what would be expected of a competent and careful driver, where it would be obvious to a competent and careful driver that driving in this way would be dangerous" — a definition that builds fault into the offence itself.
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