Audrey Fyfe's daughter calls for support in urging Gary McCourt sentence appeal - deadline is May 31st

The daughter of 75-year-old Edinburgh cyclist Audrey Fyfe is urging people to join the 4,500 who have already written to Scotland’s Lord Advocate to ask him to appeal the “derisory” sentence handed down to driver Gary McCourt who was found guilty of causing her mother’s death through careless driving. The deadline to write is next Friday 31 May.

Aileen Brown made her appeal in a comment to an article on road.cc reporting the sentence handed down to McCourt by Sheriff James Scott at Edinburgh Sheriff Court earlier this month. The 47-year-old was sentenced to 300 hours’ community service and banned from driving for five years.

In her comment, Ms Brown said:

Thanks for all your support. We have now had almost now 4,500 people write to the Lord Advocate protesting at this derisory sentence as well as wall-to-wall coverage in Scotland.

Gary McCourt's face is so well known in Edinburgh that, I suspect he is frightened to leave the house, let alone drive again.

If you haven't already added you weight to the onslaught of letters to the Lord Advocate, please do it now. We have until 31st May to make our feelings known.

National cyclists’ organisation CTC, of which Mrs Fyfe had been a member or more than five decades, has produced a form letter you can sign and send, or personalise as you wish, which you can find here.

When he was convicted in April, it was revealed that McCourt had been found guilty in 1986 of causing the death of 22-year-old student George Dalgity through reckless driving.

A subsequent Freedom of Information Act request has revealed that McCourt, who had pleaded not guilty to that charge, although he entered guilty pleas on separate charges of driving without insurance, driving without a full licence and without supervision or licence plates, leaving the scene without exchanging details or reporting the collision to the police, and failing to produce his licence afterwards. 

He was sentenced to one year’s imprisonment, and banned for driving for ten years.

Ms Brown added:


I've been thinking what we need to do to make sure other drivers don't drive while banned.

Perhaps if the penalty for breaching a driving ban was life imprisonment these mindless murderers would think twice about it.

I'd also have the police confiscate the cars of any drivers given a temporary or permanent driving ban although I acknowledge that wouldn't stop them driving other people's vehicles.

For those who have a temporary ban, I would add a requirement for the driver to have compulsory cycle training & provide evidence of 1,000 [miles] ridden on a bike to that they gain some understanding of what it's like not to be surrounded by air bags & a crumple zone.