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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Two drivers cleared of causing death by careless driving after hitting cyclist in low sun
Two drivers whose cars hit a cyclist in Shopshire two years ago have been cleared of causing his death by careless driving after they claimed they had been unable to see him because of low sun and glare from a wet road.
On the morning of October 17, 2012, cyclist John Edmund Searle was hit by the wing mirror of a car being driven by Pamela Willocks. The 59-year-old teaching assistant fell into the road, and moments later was run over by a van driven by Russel Davies, inflicting fatal injuries.
He was then hit a third time by a silver Citroen, Shrewsbury Crown Court heard during the trial.
Despite efforts by paramedics to revive him, Mr Searle died at the scene.
According to the Shropshire Star, dentist Gary Pitkin, who was driving the other way on the B4368 Corvedale Road near Craven Arms, stopped to try and assist Mr Searle. As he called emergency services, Mr Pitkin was hit by a blue car, breaking his leg.
Mrs Willocks and Mr Davies denied the charges of careless driving.
The court was told that low morning sun, and glare from the wet road had made it hard for drivers to see as they drove east along the road.
Davies said he had been on the way to a job when it happened.
He said: “All of a sudden the near side wheel on the van struck something on the road. There was a massive jolt. It felt like something like a raised drain cover or something at the time.
“I was a bit worried something had fallen off the vehicle into the road and that was why we went back really.”
He said he was greeted with “carnage”. “It was not what I expected to see when I came back round the bend.”
Asked by his solicitor Miss Kim Halsall if he knew if his vehicle had gone over Mr Searle's bike, Mr Davies replied: “No. I didn’t know at the time, I didn’t know what I had gone over.”
He added that he could not say if he had also driven over Mr Searle. He said: "I don’t know what I went over at the time.”
Prosecutor Simon Davis, asked Davies: “This wasn’t any old bump was it? It was quite substantial?”
Davies said: “I said to the officer at the time I thought it was a drain cover. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
The prosecutor said: “The jolt you felt was Mr Searle’s body, wasn’t it?”
“No, I don’t know,” Davies said.
Mr Davis asked: “How can you dispute it was Mr Searle’s body?”
“I can’t,” Davies said. “I didn’t know what it was so I don’t know.”
Davies said he had not been driving too quickly and had not been distracted. Asked if he should have been driving more slowly because of the low sunlight and glare he said: “I thought I was driving at a safe speed for those conditions, I would have been driving slower otherwise.”
Constable Ian Edwards, a collision expert for West Mercia Police, said sunlight would have been shining directly into the eyes of drivers travelling eastbound on the road.
After Mr Searle had been hit by three separate cars, Gary Pikin stopped to try and help.
He said: “I thought I saw some rubbish and a bright yellow thing I thought was a sack or bag. I slowed down and as we passed I saw a chap in the road near his bike.”
Mr Pitkin said he pulled up and ran to the aid of the cyclist. He said: “I put my right hand on the cyclist’s shoulder and said ‘I can see you have been hurt, I am going to phone for an ambulance’. The cyclist made a groaning noise.
“I straight away got on the phone and had an infuriating call with the emergency services who did not know what road I was referring to.”
The court heard that while he was on the phone, a blue car hit Mr Pitkin and he fell and broke his left leg.
He said: “I am prone to pacing while on the phone so was walking backwards and forwards trying to explain where I was. While I was facing Craven Arms I got hit by a car that came through, it spun me round and I landed on my backside with my feet slightly over Mr Searle. It felt like a hard rugby tackle and I don’t think I left the ground. Mr Searle did not move from when we passed him in the car to when I was hit.”
Christopher Smith, a passenger in Davies’ van on October 17 on their way to an electrical contract, told the court the weather conditions made driving difficult as the sun was shining strongly and they were driving towards it.
Mr Smith said: “The van was going about 40 to 50 mph. We went over something in the road, about a mile and a half from Craven Arms. It felt like going over a log or something. Russel said to me ‘What was that?’ and I replied, ‘I don’t know’.”
Asked if he was comfortable with the way Mr Davies was driving, Mr Smith said: "Yes."
Mrs Willocks and Mr Davies were acquitted of careless driving by unanimous verdicts of the jury yesterday.
Judge Robert Eades said: “This has been a very unusual case and it had a lot of permutations which made it from a lawyer’s point of view very interesting but from a jury point of view very difficult.”
This is the second case this year in which the prosecution has been unable to convince a jury that drivers who kill should not be able to use being dazzled by the sun as an excuse.
Last month two drivers accused of causing the death of a cyclist by careless driving were cleared by a jury at Newcastle Crown Court. They had said during their trial that they had been blinded by the sun before hitting cyclist Stan Coates on October 26, 2012. The driver who initially struck Mr Coates was found guilty of careless driving.
If some sweary venting about this and similar cases would make you feel better (or even angrier) this commentary by Bez is well worth a read.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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55 comments
And riding without eye protection is safer? I hope you challenged that bogus ticket.
And difference between a tinted visor and tinted windows is? Sunglasses that can be removed once it get's dark.
That: "If you can’t see, if your eyes don’t fucking work, don’t carry on at 40-50mph."
Thanks Bez
The problems are numerous. Having not heard the evidence or the entire summing up I'd like to read it. Causation, i.e. which person is guilty, is problematic. Our legal system isn't well set up for multiple defendants to all be guilty but, someone should be. That should be a question of fact.
But, the main issue, is that a jury is made up of your peers. And, by and large, your peers will be car drivers. And they're overwhelming issue is that they think "Oh, I know what driving in the sun is like, that could have happened to me."
Until we lose that attitude there will be no convictions.
This was, I assume, the exact issue with the previous case in Shropshire: it could not be proven that either collision delivered unsurvivable injuries and therefore the "causing death" charges could not be upheld.
However, in that case there was, at least, one conviction for careless driving, which is at least a recognition that the driving was below some expected standard. These trials have failed to achieve even that rather lukewarm response.
Do the Police actually check the *rear* of the windscreen in the case of an incident like this - the difference between the rear of the screen being dirty vs clean makes a bloody HUGE difference in those sort of conditions.
RIP Mr. Searle
A big thank you and hope you have made a full recovery Mr. Pitkin.
To the jury, shame on you.
'Low sun', a cop out on all fatalities where driving to conditions does not occur.
50mph while blind, is the crux of it.
You really have to worry if discussion ended with "I thought it was safe, or I'd have been going slower".
to be fair the comment I thought it was a drain cover about sums it up for me, Is the driver actually saying that driving over someone is like driving over a drain cover? Not having driven over a person, from experience a dead rabbit and a drain cover feel different.
I'm amazed that (seemingly) no one really tore this apart in court. They seem to have pressed him on whether he thought it was a body but that seems like it would have been quite simple:
“The jolt you felt was Mr Searle’s body, wasn’t it?”
“No, I don’t know,”
“How can you dispute it was Mr Searle’s body?”
“I can’t, I didn’t know what it was so I don’t know.”
[me steps into court]
“Excuse me, your honour… Mr Davies, you said you returned to the scene?”
“Yes.”
“And was there a manhole cover in the vicinity?”
“No.”
“What substantial objects were in the road, Mr Davies?”
“Well… um… there was a man's body.”
“A man's body. I see. And what else was in the road?”
"What else?"
“Yes, Mr Davies, what else?”
“Er… nothing.”
“So you ran over a substantial object in the road, and the only substantial object in the road was, in fact, a man's body?”
“Um…”
“Thankyou, your honour.”
[me walks out, high fives clerk of the court, drives off in awesomely cool car with the sun-visor down]
Is that how it works? I mean, if you run over something inanimate in the road then it stays there. And if you run over something animate in the road it generally becomes inanimate. So, unless physics went on holiday, what's left in the road is what was run over, no?
Indeed, and it appears to be a valid excuse for killing or maiming someone.
Don't know why they have an issue with driving blind drunk...
Bring on the self-driving cars! Please!
40-50mph is a dangerous speed, not so much for the speed, but in the way it encourages drivers to drive.
In poor light conditions like this, you basically get closer to the car in front of you so that you are able to see what they are doing at all times, but still have enough time to react to their brakes should they need to stop.
This works fine in practice until a car hits something that it doesn't react to... such as a cyclist.
So the car behind who can see nothing but the car in front has no triggers to look for a hazard and just carries on.
And there you are, before you know it, a cyclist has been run over 3 times.
How do we stop this style of driving? I don't know the answer to that, but what I am personally aware of are those roads where the speed is moderate and traffic heavy as this is when its likely to happen.
We stop this style of driving by removing the privilege of driving from anyone whose vehicle is in involved in a serious incident, and imprisoning them unless they can prove their innocence to three judges. Take the jury out of this - most of them are too busy sympathising with the drivers to be useful, and take the discretion out of revocation of privilege - they've proved themselves unfit.
However, judges do instruct the jury to ignore the driving to conditions guidance, so what hope?
Not much, agreed. Do sometimes wonder if they'd spot ballistic house bricks in similar circumstances.
this in that article annoys me as well:
"Mr Searle had fallen off his bike on the B4368 between Craven Arms and Bridgnorth after clipping the wing mirror of Mrs Willocks’ red Kia"
I think you'll find she clipped him with her wing mirror...
Clipped? The word is "whacked", please.
"'Wear hi-viz' they said. 'We'll see you then' they said. " - dead cyclists
FFS, what hope is there!
12 drivers were asked to judge a 2 drivers knowing full well that the red light jumping scum had no right to be on that road and that driving blind is an inalienable right.
so the van was doing 40-50mph, and the driver thinks this is slowing down? We are talking about a twisty country road not some motorway, hardly slowed down!
Fucking disgusting.
the same lame excuse .. disgusting, but as the jury were probably all
cars drivers not surprising.
when someone in the judiciary suffers a loss at the hands of a
"dazzled" driver perhaps we'll see a change, but i doubt that too
Apparently 'driving to the conditions' means fuck all these days. Another travesty.
I think Bez covers it very well. I totally agree.
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