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Taking the blame

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poppy1

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? PA

My daughter was threatened and cooerced by her father to tell the police officer that she was driving the vehicle when they were driving at night, hit black ice and rolled the jeep. Her father was the one driving and had some beer earlier. My daughter did not want to do it but she was scared of his temper and wanted so desperately to please her father. She had not spent any real time with him between the ages of 1 and four and after the year of five, he had abandoned any relationship or contact at all with her for ten years. When he came back into her life it was nothing but drama and sometimes violent behavior but she kept hoping for the perfect relationship she had always dreamed of. She was 18 at the time of the accident. Now a year later, she has confessed this story to me. She was involved in another car accident, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was not distracted by friends or coming from a party. She had a tailgater on her rear and the car in front of her stopped too suddenly. There was traffic and no where for her to go to prevent more disaster. Anyway she has to go for a departmental hearing and if asked the details of that particular accident, does not want to lie again. This time her father will not be there to take away the opportunity to tell the truth. She knows she still has to pay the consequences for the lie at the scene of the accident, she just wants to tell the truth- not to change the past- just to do the right thing the way she has been taught. By law what can the judge do to her? What are the penalties for telling a lie about who was driving? Will she be arrested for that lie? I appauld my daughter for intending to tell the truth, even though she knows it cannot erase what she did whether she was threatened or not....but I am a concerned mother.
 


I_Got_Banned

Senior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? PA

My daughter was threatened and cooerced by her father to tell the police officer that she was driving the vehicle when they were driving at night, hit black ice and rolled the jeep. Her father was the one driving and had some beer earlier. My daughter did not want to do it but she was scared of his temper and wanted so desperately to please her father. She had not spent any real time with him between the ages of 1 and four and after the year of five, he had abandoned any relationship or contact at all with her for ten years. When he came back into her life it was nothing but drama and sometimes violent behavior but she kept hoping for the perfect relationship she had always dreamed of. She was 18 at the time of the accident. Now a year later, she has confessed this story to me. She was involved in another car accident, just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was not distracted by friends or coming from a party. She had a tailgater on her rear and the car in front of her stopped too suddenly. There was traffic and no where for her to go to prevent more disaster. Anyway she has to go for a departmental hearing and if asked the details of that particular accident, does not want to lie again. This time her father will not be there to take away the opportunity to tell the truth. She knows she still has to pay the consequences for the lie at the scene of the accident, she just wants to tell the truth- not to change the past- just to do the right thing the way she has been taught. By law what can the judge do to her? What are the penalties for telling a lie about who was driving? Will she be arrested for that lie? I appauld my daughter for intending to tell the truth, even though she knows it cannot erase what she did whether she was threatened or not....but I am a concerned mother.
Lets assume that there are no severe penalties if she were to admit lying about the first accident. That leaves whoever is conducting the hearing with the option of not believing her statements about the second accident... ("you lied then so why should I believe you're not lying now" kind of thinking).

The purpose of the hearing is not going to be to determine whether she lied the first time, the second time or ever. The purpose of the hearing will not be to determine what type of relationship she has with her father why he abandoned her and for how long.

The purpose of the hearing will be to determine whether your daughter and in the normal course of her driving, is capable of making decisions that are conducive to her safety and to the safety of others. And judging by the description that you gave about how the second accident occurred, I would guess that she is not.

Why? When somebody is tailgating me, my first instinct is to allow myself more distance between me and the car in front of me; That will accomplish two things, first, it will allow me more stopping distance if traffic were to suddenly stop, AND more importantly, it might make the driver who is tailgating me from behind either back off or preferably pass me up.

Considering the fact that I am not too familiar with the specific laws/procedures in PA, please only consider this as a general opinion. I am sure one of the PA experts will chime in as well...

Good luck.
 

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