A call was made yesterday for tougher penalties for careless driving after a school bus driver who ran over and killed an elderly woman was sentenced to community service. Lee Kwok-wah, 60, was handed 120 hours' community service and disqualified from driving for six months by a magistrate who said the driver might not have noticed the petite 78-year-old as she crossed the road at a point where she possibly should not have done. Making the order in Sha Tin Court, Timothy Casewell took into account the grounds that Lee was his family's sole breadwinner and had a 30-year clean record. Lee had earlier been acquitted of the more serious charge of dangerous driving causing death. The chairman of the Legislative Council's transport panel, Andrew Cheng Kar-foo, said the Road Traffic Ordinance should be reviewed and the maximum penalties for both offences increased. 'This will help to alert the Department of Justice and the court that more scrutiny must be paid to sentencing and conviction,' he said. 'There are too many [fatal] cases that made us feel uncomfortable with [the penalties].' The maximum penalty for careless driving is a six-month jail term and a HK$4,000 fine. For dangerous driving causing death, the maximum fine is HK$50,000 and five years in jail. Yesterday's case was the third in the past month in which the lenience of the sentences was questioned. Making his order, the magistrate said Lee's driving skill 'was not the sole cause' of the fatal accident in Yi Shing Square, Sha Tin, on November 17 last year. He had earlier ruled that the woman, just 1.4m tall, might have been standing in the blind spot in the mirror the driver used to show areas obscured by his vehicle's body. He also said the prosecution had failed to show that the woman had crossed the road properly. But as the driver of a large vehicle, Lee should have scrutinised his surroundings carefully. Last month two Kowloon City Bus drivers, both charged with dangerous driving causing death, were fined. Yeung Kam-ming, 49, was fined HK$4,000 and disqualified from driving for two months after his double decker ran over and killed an 80-year-old jaywalker in Mong Kok. A HK$5,000 fine and 12 months' disqualification was imposed on Lee Wai-man, 52, whose double-decker rammed a container truck on a Yuen Long highway and two passengers were thrown from the upper deck through a torn-off roof, killing one.
