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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Texting van driver cleared of responsibility for death of 18-year-old cyclist
A driver who admitted exchanging texts with his girlfriend before his van hit and killed an 18-year-old cyclist has been cleared of causing death by dangerous driving, and of causing death by careless driving.
Philip Sinden was driving the Vauxhall Vivaro that hit and killed 18-year-old triathlete Daniel Squire on the A258 at Ringwould in Kent at around 8:40am on September 7 2013.
After the verdict, the family of Daniel Squire shouted at the jury: “Were you not listening?”, “What a waste of time” and “I can’t believe that”, reports Kent Online's Paul Hooper.
During the trial the court heard that Sinden had sent 19 texts and received 22 from his girlfriend between 6.07am and 8.32am. He and his girlfriend continued texting until she sent a message at 8.39.49. He was alleged to have composed a message at around 8.40am which was never sent.
Prosecutor Dale Sullivan said: “The defendant had been using his mobile phone either just before or at the time of the impact and he failed to react to the presence of Daniel who was in front of his vehicle until the very last moment.”
But Sinden claimed that he had not been distracted by using his phone.
“I was texting just using my left hand. When I pulled out onto the road I was trying to keep my attention on the road, so I typed without looking at the phone.”
He claimed Daniel Squire had unexpectedly joined the carriageway from the pavement.
“I realised it was a cyclist on the pavement on my left hand side. He started to come off the pavement and I started to react. I started to brake and steer around the cyclist.
“It was all very quick but it seemed to me he had adjacened [sic] out slightly from the lane he should have been on.”
Sinden told the jury that Daniel had turned around and looked behind him “just before it [the van] struck the bike”.
“He just came out more than I expected. I spiked my brakes," he said.
Members of Daniel Squire's family attended every day of the trial at Canterbury Crown Court.
Judge Heather Norton expressed her “profound sympathy” for Daniel's family.
She told them: “I appreciate that is not the verdict you were expecting and was not the verdict you were hoping for.”
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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82 comments
It can be appealed if the judge incorrectly directed the jury, got the law wrong or just totally misunderstood the issues which was evident in his directions to the jury. But it would have to be a significant and relevant error on their part.
Please establish contact via Twitter (via Kent_Cyclist)
This could be important evidence that wasn't aired at the trial.
Ah so texting is ok. Cycling is an incumberance to texting road users. Judge 1 justice nil. Killer goes free. What a fuck up system we have in the UK.
Do we know the drivers address? More ways of achieving justice than through courts.
While out and about today, I saw quite a number of people using phones while driving, mostly van drivers. Looking at a phone screen, or holding one to your ear while driving is bad enough, but actually typing text whilst driving . . . WTF !!!
This is a very odd verdict given the circumstances as described in this post. It sets a very dangerous precedent. Anybody up before a jury in future, for a similar offence, can now quote this particular case and say, "all I was doing was texting, I wasn't looking at the screen, or talking into the phone", to stand a good chance of getting away with it.
There seems little point in having a law that forbids phone use while driving, if this is what happens when an offender kills someone.
license to drive = license to kill
Something I have noticed in London recently is a growing number of cyclists and pedestrians shouting abuse at motorists using hand held mobile phones / smart phones whilst driving, or tapping on their window to let them know other people are watching. I can think of several instances where people have alerted a nearby Police officer to the driver, who has then been flagged down.
I also remember a courier who was infamous in London for ripping phones of out motorists hands and throwing them into the traffic!
However, its very obvious that the Police have no real control over the streets any more, especially road traffic, and citizens are now taking it upon themselves to shame motorists by making a commotion.
I agree with an earlier comment that we need a massive publicity campaign to chance social attitudes towards cell phone driving, as was done with seat belts and drink driving.
When the law was changed there did seem to be an improvement for a while, until the smart phone became very accessible to the masses, with its all inherent distractions.
In addition, its a fair bet that motorists have realized the chances of being caught, let alone prosecuted, are minute.
It's not about mobile phones.
This morning a transit van driver flew past far too close for no good reason downhill into a 40mph limit, honked loudly and shook his fist out of the window (by which time he was past the 30mph sign and still doing 45-50mph, as many do there). He won't be opening the curtains tomorrow to a broken windscreen but only because I don't know where he lives.
On Monday an HGV overtook on double white lines with a car coming the other way and cut back in so early that I had to hit the brakes.
A colleague was telling me that he won't cycle to the office any more. He was sick of the fear that the next close pass could easily end his life, and that he was powerless to do anything about it.
Let's be honest, it's not about mobile phones.
The problem with juries is that they are, in the main, composed of people who either lack the wit to come up with an excuse to get out of doing jury service, or simply have nothing better to do with their time.
I would sh*t myself if I were ever put in front of a jury to defend myself against a crime I didn't commit, because time and again the verdicts returned prove nothing other than that the jurors are utter f*cktards.
I've read many moronic comments on here but this takes the biscuit. I've done jury service twice and am neither of those. Sometimes they are composed of opinionated tossers like yourself who are unable to view things objectively, and other occasions of people whose logic is difficult to fathom. What you should do is get involved and try to help these people come to the right and proper verdict. I've spent hours arguing in murder and child abuse trials. In the end we got the right outcome. If they weren't allowed to do a majority verdict it could have been one person the rest of the jury couldn't turn round. You on the other hand contribute fuck all, other than lining your own pockets with more money by opting out.
I don't usually comment on these things because you can normally apply some logic to a decision that while not popular with cyclists explains the decision. But this is unbelievable. Anyone texting while driving is not in full control of their vehicle. My deepest sympathy goes out to the victims family and friends.
The guy didn't even get fined £70 for using a mobile phone whilst driving.
Another shuddering reminder of the completely f+@ked situation we find ourselves where a driver having carried out those actions can be found not guilty.
As far I can see the following needs to happen..
1) A massive, and I mean far beyond the scale of the current one running for drug driving media campaign needs to take place to stigmatise driving whilst using your phone in the same way that drink driving is seen now. If the van driver had been drunk he'd have been found guilty by the jury. Of that I have no doubt. The issue is that drink driving is the only road crime that is seen as a crime by the general public.
2) Unmarked police motorbikes need to be used to activly go out and catch people doing this. Bring a fear (and i chose that word carefully) to drivers that they are going to get caught if they don't change their behaivior. Not PCSO's looking at green boxes where the drivers lower their phones by the time they get to them. The police must start putting resources into this.
3) As a London rider I'm going to make it my business to press any candidate for the next mayor position for if they would back the above. We have vast resources poured into stopping terror attacks, kettling student protests, policing areas around football grounds. If this many people were getting killed by football violence then there'd be uproar.
The only candidate who's in favour of creating streets safe and pleasant for people of all sorts is Christian Wolmar. Unfortunately he's far down the current polls because he's so much less known than the ex-ministers etc.
I'm voting for him, genuine nice guy and would be great, but with no expectation of him winning
It does sound like a classic SWSS, Single Witness Suicide Swerve.
I know we dont have all of the facts and I really hate to feel like this, I also probably dont mean it but....right at this moment....I really do hope the jury loose someone to a texting driver.
So what is the justice system trying to say? Vigilante justice is the only way?
What direction did the judge give the jury? Was m'lady asleep and missed the admission of the offence of using a hand help mobile telephone while driving?
To the jury....SHAME ON YOU
I know it's been said before, but, if ever I want to murder someone, I'm going to buy them a bike.
A disgrace! I'm not saying, hang the driver for texting, and maybe a custodial sentence would do no good, but at least let it be known he was largely responsible for the death of that poor boy.
I didn't murder him, ha swerved into my knife while I was vaguely distracted by trying to load my gun.
time to deal with things your self cos the law wont
Unbelievable verdict. Obviously no cyclists on the jury then.
As well as the blatant breach of the law regarding mobile phones, Highway Code has plenty to say about drivers and cyclists such as ;
213
Motorcyclists and cyclists may suddenly need to avoid uneven road surfaces and obstacles such as drain covers or oily, wet or icy patches on the road. Give them plenty of room and pay particular attention to any sudden change of direction they may have to make.
There is an onus on the driver to be give space, anticipate and be prepared to move or brake.
I am not sure how you can do this if you are busy texting. And to claim you can text without looking at the phone!! And the jury agreed!!! Gobsmacked....
Maybe the Cyclists Defence Fund and CTC can pursue this further, this is farcical.....
Spot on!
It's surreal how little accountability it there is when it comes to cyclist vs automobile. Surely this must change!
My deepest sympathies go out to Daniel's family.
Awful. I feel so sorry for the family and depressed that we let idiots like this off after killing a person.
Unreal outcome, his poor family. I hope there is some sort of avenue to appeal but I fear there isn't.
Words fail!
When the only witness is dead a defendant can make up any story to minimise their responsibility. I hope their conscience makes them pay but I suspect it won't.
Honestly WTF.
I would be nice to know it there were any other witness to the classic motorist suggestion of a "suicide swerve" by the cyclist.
Other than that It would be dreadful if the members of the jury were to loss somebody close to them in simular circumstances and they receive same "justice". I'd feel so sorry for them.
The message seams to be, it open season on cyclists.
Sober killer gets let off!
Alcoholic Arsonist jailed for 7.5 years.
The arsonist made the drunken mistake of only potentially killing people but definitely damaged property. We hate kids in this country and we value wealth over people.
http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/11870218.Alcoholic_arsonist_gets_7_5_yea...
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