Wimbledon school crash: Woman faces no charges over girls’ deaths

16 comments

1. The driver suffered a seizure. What a horrific incident. Sometimes terrible things happen and there’s no one at fault. Maybe it would have been easier for the parents to accept if they were able to “blame” someone specific.

   Horrible for both parties’ families.

2. Such a sad story. If the driver had never had a seizure before then how was she to know what was going to happen? If she was previously diagnosed with epilepsy then that is a different matter, but the story doesn’t say that is the case. You can only presume that the CPS would have had access to all of the facts and decided accordingly.

   Those parents will never ever feel like they have got justice or closure. Imagine waving your kids off to school on a sunny morning only to never seem them alive again and no one will ever be held accountable…

3. I was diagnosed with epilepsy at 14, I chose not to learn to drive. As I understand it you have a driver’s licence you need to be seizure free for at least two years before driving again.

4. A terrible event for all concerned, two bereaved families and a woman living with a serious medical condition and having to deal with what happened, probably for the rest of her life.

   What remains to be resolved, however, is the part played by the vehicle that she was driving. If she had been driving a Fiesta, say, rather than a car specifically designed to drive over any obstacle things might have been different. Is that the sort of thing that the coroner takes into account? 

5. Hopefully the leads to school play grounds being protected from small to medium sized vehicles.

   Bollards on the pavement might have helped a lot?

6. Get these over powered huge cars off the city and town streets. Tax them out of existence.

7. I hope the arseholes who, at the time solely focused on the make of the car, are ashamed.

8. Ehh as angry as I am that’s fair. However I have questions. Will she lose her license for few years at least to make sure she doesn’t have more seizures?

9. Tragic incident where literally no one is declared at fault.

   /R/UK usually bunch: time to push my agenda

   Fucking hell just let things be and feel sorry for all involved who have had one of the most extreme bad luck events happen to them without trying to find a moral high ground in everything

10. ‘The girls’ families said “justice has neither been done, nor has been seen to be done today”.’

    i don’t really get this, sure this is a major tragedy and i feel so sorry for the families involved, but if the woman didn’t have a pre-existing condition and has never had a seizure before, what can you really do?

    if the woman knew she shouldn’t be on the road and has a history of seizures, then fine, i agree with her being charged in some way, but the article says there’s no evidence of a pre-existing condition or history of seizures, so how would it be fair to arrest or charge someone for something completely out of her control?

    but then again the article is a bit vague here, it says no evidence of ‘suffering a similar seizure’, so did she go through something before despite not being diagnosed, or what? it doesn’t seem to be super clear.

11. Not that I’m searching for blame, though this must be heartbreaking for the parents, but the only cause for the issue here is the vehicle size.

    I much fancy my niece’s chances against a Citroen Ami than a Defender 110. Absolutely no need for these kind of cars in the intrepid rural countryside that is …Wimbledon.

    This accident is one thing, but I’ve even seen entire roads reduced to single track because of these SUVs parking up on the sides. Where we’d once be able to drive up and down normally, we now need to flash the car ahead and give way to one direction at a time.

    Come over to r/ukbike, we love a good moan about Range Rovers believing they’re Morris Minis.

12. The irony of people justifying these humongous cars for the safety of their own families.

13. Keep seeing statements saying the car crashed through the fence, it didn’t.
    There was a news live scene where it clearly showed a fence panel had been removed intact to allow for access, the vehicle had smashed into the metal barrier and flew over.
    I think a lower car like a regular saloon or hatchback would have just smashed into the barrier and stayed there.

14. This is a terrible tragedy and words cannot express the sorrow parents of these poor girls will live with forever. I also feel sorry for the lady who crashed into the school. It sounds like one of these random seizures that can happen to anyone at any time. Some people criticize the lady for driving an SUV, but I think something like this could have happened to a delivery driver in a van etc. Overall, it just seems like an extremely unlucky coincidence.

15. Maybe, just maybe people shouldn’t be driving tanks that are capable of going effortlessly through a fence? Statistically fiat punto would be much less likely to kill these children than a 3 tonnes suv.

    While the law decided that the woman is not to blame, I made my mind ages ago. Don’t drive around in a fucking tank. It’s that simple. Her selfish decisions killed innocent children and their parents have right to feel they have been wronged by justice system. That’s because they were

16. Chat looking in the wrong direction. Ex husband a lawyer. She walked out of the vehicle, never went to hospital. Was in the reception of a local school picking up her other children 1 hour later. CPS have named her. They don’t have enough evidence to prosecute, but want to make a point. We all know where she lives. Flip flop. Large vehicle. Unsuitable for Wimbledon Village. Driving without due care and attention.