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news
Arbroath Road, Dundee (credit: Google Maps)Brother-in-law of former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf fined £450 for crashing into cyclist at red light while driving uninsured car
The brother-in-law of former Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf has been fined £450 for crashing into a cyclist after failing to stop at a red light while driving an uninsured car, leaving the rider with minor injuries.
Ramsay El-Nakla, a father of three from Dundee and brother of the wife of SNP politician Yousaf – who served as Scotland’s first minister between March 2023 and May 2024 and also as the country’s transport minister between 2016 and 2018 – was dropping his children off at school when he collided with 59-year-old cyclist James Clunie from behind at a set of traffic lights on Arbroath Road.
According to the motorist, he failed to notice the cyclist filtering past as they approached the lights because he was turning down his car radio. Clunie, who was stopped at the lights at the time of the crash, was thrown onto the bonnet of El-Nakla’s car before falling to the ground, sustaining a minor back injury.
At Dundee’s Justice of the Peace Court earlier this week, 37-year-old El-Nakla admitted to driving carelessly and failing to slow when approaching a red light, failing to keep a proper lookout, and colliding with a stationary cyclist.
The motorist also admitted driving a car without insurance, though an additional charge of driving without a valid MOT certificate was dropped.
El-Nakla claimed in court that he had broken his mobile phone on holiday and was unaware that his insurance policy had been cancelled.
“In relation to having no insurance, he had gone to Ireland to visit family and had broken his phone, and did not receive messages about the direct debit failing,” Annika Jethwa, mitigating, told the court on Tuesday.
“He had had difficulties during the year and it was the policy of the company to cancel if there was a third payment failure. He has been driving since he was 19 and has never had insurance issues.”
Describing the crash itself, discal depute Ewan Chambers told the court: “The traffic lights were red so the complainer stopped. The accused failed to notice the complainer stopped at the junction.
“He has gone into the rear of the complainer’s pushbike, which caused the complainer to be thrown off the bike, landing on the bonnet of the car, before falling to the ground.
“The complainer sustained a small cut to a finger on his right hand and minor pain in his back. The accused remained at the scene for 20 minutes to assist and passed on his details. Police checks were carried out on the accused’s vehicle and showed it had no insurance.”
Defending El-Nakla, Jethwa said: “He was driving along and there was a van in front of him. He was of the view the van was going to continue driving, but it braked quite suddenly in front of him.
“The bicycle has come along the inside. He has gone to turn down his radio and hadn’t noticed the bike coming up beside him. The bicycle had stopped between where the van stopped and where he stopped.
“He didn’t brake in time and he struck the bike. Fortunately, he was driving extremely slowly at the time because he was coming up to traffic lights and the injury was of a minor nature.
“He waited and gave help in whatever way he could. He had been on a school run at the time. Because he had no insurance there is a civil claim against him which will be resolved elsewhere.”
Jethwa also argued that any punishment that would mean El-Nakla would lose his driving licence would “cause hardship” to the 37-year-old, who received £1,400 a month on universal credit and disability payments, and needed a car “to help with the family”.
Earlier this year, El-Nakla pleaded not guilty to extortion and Class A drug offences, after he was accused of intimidating a man and extorting money from him using threatening behaviour, as well as being linked to the supply of cocaine and heroin in Dundee.
“He has a record, but it is not the worst. This was the combination of a few factors at the time. There would be hardship caused to the family if he was disqualified,” Jethwa told the court this week.
Fining El-Nakla a total £450 for the crash, which he was ordered to pay off through monthly instalments of £40, justice of the peace William Morrison also imposed six penalty points on his driving licence.
“It is an unfortunate incident, but it is indicative of a period of inattention, a momentary lapse, and I accept that,” he said.
“Nevertheless, there was injury – albeit minor – and the cyclist ought to have been protected.”
This isn’t the first time, of course, that the relative of a high-profile Scot has been fined and handed penalty points for an incident involving a cyclist.
In December, we reported that Cheryl McGregor, the wife of former Scotland, Rangers, and Hull City goalkeeper Allan McGregor, was caught on camera by a cyclist who was initially close passed, before spotting the driver roll through a red light and then use her mobile phone behind the wheel.
Cyclist films close pass and phone use (credit: magnatom/YouTube)In footage captured by the cyclist’s helmet camera, McGregor, driving a BMW with the personalised number plate ‘MCG1A’, can be seen overtaking close to the cyclist before driving through a red light at a later junction.
With the driver stopped in traffic, the cyclist waited for the lights to change and caught up with their vehicle, where he saw her using a mobile phone, the entire episode caught on camera.
However, the cyclist, David Brennan, told road.cc that it is “almost impossible to get road justice in Scotland” and accused the courts of “poor protection of vulnerable road users”, after he discovered in November that McGregor had accepted a deal which enabled her to plead guilty solely to using a mobile phone at the wheel.
She was then handed six penalty points and a £255 fine, a punishment Brennan described as “ludicrously lenient”.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
Latest Comments
- mdavidford 2 sec ago
Well Hitler's lot did have a thing for hanging around beer halls.
- David9694 4 min 40 sec ago
Peter Burrow death by careless driving sentence backlash...
- mitsky 13 min 57 sec ago
Anyone who doesn't like CyclingMikey (and others who report dangerous drivers) is admitting that they are condoning bad driving, injuries and...
- OnYerBike 36 min 14 sec ago
Gore Wear have released their own line of new jackets (the "Spinshift" ones) which, as far as I know, are made from the same material as this Rapha...
- I love my bike 42 min 46 sec ago
Professional cycle Sport without sponsored teams?...
- I love my bike 52 min 1 sec ago
Moon had a range of front lights that all used the same mounts, with micro-USB charging & cable remotes. Many were updated to USB C charging ...
- chrisonabike 1 hour 1 min ago
The van driver is really trolling us - their two wheels appear to be on the double-yellows!...
- jaymack 1 hour 15 min ago
Je croiserai les doigts (as you can see my French is on par with my ancient Greek!)
- wtjs 1 hour 25 min ago
it wasn't, as the original comments said, a 'close pass'....
- OnYerBike 1 hour 53 min ago
I agree with essexian - can't think of any reason beyond the council/contractors forgot when they resurfaced the road at some point between 2014...
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18 comments
He maybe should have killed the cyclist, then he would have got off with it rather than what he got.
Must be something in that family as good old useless was caught driving without insurance a few years back. When, if I've remembered correctly, he was transport minister.
As you know the case, maybe clarify he was driving a friend's car he thought he was fully insured to drive under his own policy. But following his recent divorce, he hadn't been made a main policy holder on his car (which he had been insured to drive all cars under whilst married).
So again an inference of calculated wrongdoing when it was a personal administrative cockup any of us could have made. We once drove uninsured for 6 months having moved house, missed paper reminders in the day before apps, thought the other half of the marriage had sorted it etc.
But hey - living in Scotland I'm kinda used to this sort of beat-up. Yawn.
Most people don't get in and drive someone else's car without being sure they are insured to do so.
We know this is inportant because from the point anyone learns to drive they can't fail to be aware of the need to be insured on any vehicle they drive.
It's the personal responsibility of all drivers to check insurance before turning the key to start the engine of someone else's car.
Some amount of whataboutery, at the end of the day he had no insurance. He failed to check this and suffered the consequences.
You must be a high heid yin in the nusnp to be defending them so resolutely. I could go on but this is not the forum for that.
Folks, is this news because he's the brother-in-law of a former FM? Are you insinuating some sort of connivance? Based on what evidence?
Otherwise, the FM link is utterly irrelevant.
So why lead with it?
Tend to agree with you however it's a simple fact of life for people who are in the public eye.
Although in this case there is a family link of being caught driving without insurance.
So are you saying that he was driving without insurance because his sister was married to the former FM?
...because if there's no link, it's *totally irrelevant* to any story.
"So are you saying that he was driving without insurance because his sister was married to the former FM?". No that's not what I was saying.
I was pointing out that it's the way the press works. Driven I guess by it's readers.
Also that our former FM Hamza himself was caught driving without insurance while transport secretary. Thereby there is a family link to the offence. At the time of his offense many believed he was more leniently dealt with than Joe public would have been.
Both these facts give the relevance you are looking for.
When the Holyrood set up means that Scotland's chief law officer is a member of cabinet and sits round the cabinet table with the ministers you can see how the impression of impropriaty can be given.
'Family link to the offence'?
So now you're saying that being in that family - even by marriage - makes you more likely to commit a traffic offence? Really?
'many believed'. Right. OTOH, politicians are often dealt with far more severely than the public would be, because optics. Where it's a minor offence, first offence, and obviously a genuine mistake (he had a full policy on another vehicle), I think you'll find all police forces are lenient. He can't win. And by extension, the public are further pushed into believing all politicians are on the take/abusing power.
That's how fascists get into power - by fermenting dissent then positioning themselves as the answer to an apparently corrupt system. 'Drain the swamp', anyone? How's that playing out?
Yes it's a cycling website using an extremely tenuous link to drive traffic - hardly Watergate. I'm worked up because I expected better.
TBH I think "optics" is a feature of the system. Politicians know that people are watching to see if they cock up. And this will cause issues (to the extent they don't have enough power and support just to dismiss complaints).
It's open to people to propose a better system * but that is an important feature of the one we have. Yes, there probably needs to be "belief in the system" but there has to be some measure scrutiny of any perceived corruption and genuine political competition (which will obviously exploit that). If that is lost then that is how the fascists get in **.
It may be unpleasant for the truly selfless public servants - but then we have politics *because* we can't all just get along.
* Democracy - Churchill's "least worst" system. And any proposed system has to have feedback so it's stable enough to allow government but also prevents enough power being concentrated to avoid the other "stable" state - dictatorship.
** Of course, it's "a bit more complicated than that" (e.g. article mainly drawing parallels to US a few months back but which covers some of the conditions leading to the success of fascist movements in 20's and 30's Europe.)
[Warning - nothing to do with the substance of the posts]
I think it's more usually 'fomenting', but I like this yeasty mondegreen!
Well Hitler's lot did have a thing for hanging around beer halls.
Are you confusing Hitler's Mein Kampf with Voltaire's Candida?
Assuming that you live in New Zealand you should be aware that in Scotland our political leaders enjoy a degree of .. latitude?
One rule for us and another for them. The fear here is that Ramsay has been treated differently on account of his relative's status.
Imagine if a regular person was awaiting trial on extortion charges, would they have been allowed to travel to Ireland?
I've lived in Perthshire for seven years. You really should stay abreast of NZ politics - believe me, Scotland is a beacon of properiety in comparison, despite the last two deade's onslaught by the BBC and pretty much every other media organisation around.
Clearly Mr El-Nakla is not one of Scotland's model citizens. But before you justify smearing the former FM by association (as did the headline sentence), show me a shred of evidence that said former FM or the SNP party intervened or coerced the Dundee court or Police Scotland in some manner that would be worthy of reporting.
If YOUR brother-in-law behaved in a prima facie reprehensible manner, how happy would YOU be that it was your name as the title in an article on the subject?
For all we know, the former FM and Mr El-Nakla may be totally estranged. We all know families like that.
It is not a reflection on the ex-FM, any more than Laurence Fox reflects badly on Richard Ayoade. It is a reflection on the criminal concerned that he does not see his family connection as a reason to behave better.
The family connection is newsworthy and of public interest.
A momentary lapse of reason that includes:
And we can't have anything that would get in the way of him "helping with the family", can we! It's not clear whether the 6 points will do that.
Perhaps, and I don't want to rub salt into his wounds, he should have lined up all his little ducks in a straighter line (no reference to my next point intended) before he chose to drive on the public highway. Perhaps he should be more concerned with the hardship he may inflict on those around him on the road who have no say in the matter.
His record, incidentally, is subject to review in December, when charges against him will be tested...
Link
You were doing so well on the first sentence then completely crashed and burned on the second.
The lack of reflection goes both ways. Nice try though....
You're going to have to explain your comment.
Do you have some evidence that the ex-FM has any agency in this matter? If not, then the two-way reflection is not necessary in this context.