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news
Motorist mounts pavement and attempts to drive through ‘die-in’ in Sheffield (credit - llamasteve, Twitter)Motorist who killed cyclist in “a few seconds of very bad driving and inattention” handed suspended prison sentence and five-year driving ban
A motorist has been handed a suspended prison sentence and a five-year driving ban after a judge ruled that “a few seconds of bad, bad driving” led her to hit and kill cyclist Adrian Lane at a notoriously dangerous junction where safe cycling campaigners later held a ‘die-in’ protest – only for a “raging” motorist to attempt to drive through the group of demonstrators.
58-year-old Adrian Lane was cycling on Ringinglow Road, just outside Sheffield, when he was struck by driver Gillian Dungworth, who turned across the cyclist’s path at the junction with Common Lane, causing him to catapult into the car’s windscreen.
At Sheffield Crown Court on Friday, Dungworth was given a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, after she pleaded guilty to causing Mr Lane’s death by dangerous driving, the BBC reported.
The 40-year-old nurse was following two other drivers who were turning right onto Common Lane when she hit Mr Lane, who the court heard was estimated to have been travelling downhill at 30mph.
A forensic crash investigator found that Dungworth would have been able to see Mr Lane for approximately four seconds before the crash. The court was also told that Mr Lane was not wearing a helmet at the time of the collision.
“It’s a few seconds’ inattention, isn’t it?” Recorder of Sheffield Judge Jeremy Richardson KC asked prosecutor Ian West during this week’s trial, who replied, “Yes”.
The court also heard that Louise Lane, Mr Lane’s former partner and mother to their children, had written to the Crown Prosecution Service to point out that the family felt the cyclist’s death was a “tragic accident”.
The family said that no one was to blame for the crash and they held “no bad feelings or malice towards the driver of the car”.
Judge Richardson added Dungworth, whose reaction to the collision was described as “obviously distraught”, was “filled with genuine remorse” for Mr Lane’s death.
Describing the case as “tragic”, the judge described the nurse as a “respectable woman” who had driver her car “very badly for a few seconds”.
“This is a tragedy in every conceivable way. You caused that tragedy by a few seconds of bad, bad driving,” the judge concluded, before ruling that the two-year suspended prison sentence and five-year driving ban was proportionate.
Last March, we reported that a die-in organised in memory of Mr Lane and to call for safer cycling infrastructure in the area where he was killed was disrupted after “raging” motorist allegedly mounted the pavement and grass verge before attempting to drive through the group of protesters.
According to cyclists participating in the demonstration in Sheffield in March 2023 – which saw dozens of protesters lay on the road to raise awareness of a campaign for protected cycling infrastructure and improved road safety measures following Mr Lane’s death the previous September – the motorist accelerated past a queue of traffic, drove around a barrier and towards group of the demonstrators, which included children, before getting out of his car to angrily confront those taking part.
Two of the protesters told road.cc at the time that, after the driver had made his way past the demonstration, another motorist “blocked his route”, forcing him to “wait until the road was cleared anyway”.
A cyclist involved in the vigil also told us that a different motorist shouted at the campaigners before the ‘die-in’ had started, while another “deliberately” blew exhaust fumes in their direction.
However, many of the campaigners acknowledged that the vast majority of drivers briefly delayed by the protest were patient and understanding, with some showing support for the event’s aims.
Was part of a very moving ‘lie in’ at the site of Ade’s death today. #lanecampaign. 10 mins. unbelievably one car driver mounted the grass in anger and tried to get through. Every other driver appreciated what we stood for…safe cycling, key to a compassionate city pic.twitter.com/CItqXmMLX7
— Doc on a Bike (@Ollie2Wheeler) March 25, 2023
The die-in formed part of the Lane Campaign, named after the 58-year-old cyclist and advocating for the introduction of improved safety measures and protected cycling infrastructure at the junction of Ringinglow Road and Common Lane.
The campaign wants the junction to be ‘squared off’ so drivers are forced to slow as they approach it, the introduction of a 20mph speed limit into Ringinglow village and traffic calming measures, as well as the installation of a segregated bike path.
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
- BBB 3 hours 11 min ago
Inhumane system that now will be getting even worse.
- Bungle_52 6 hours 35 min ago
In case anyone missed it in yesterdays blog here are the two pevious articles. The second one contains the testimony from the driver....
- David9694 6 hours 43 min ago
The old role was appointed at the Mayor's pleasure; is in addition to the permanent staff of the Combined Authority. I'm not sure if Adam was an...
- WillPage 8 hours 9 min ago
Nothing says "welcoming environment" like uniformed thugs, umm I mean "security patrols " roaming the area.
- galibiervelo 9 hours 27 min ago
That is class news. Super bikes and vision. Bet there will be no stand at the Taiwan bike show next year! Big luck to all the team
- Destroyer666 10 hours 9 min ago
Pretty clearly stated several times in the text that the issue was not related just to his son. And besides, everybody watching the races could see...
- Rendel Harris 10 hours 25 min ago
All Fizik and Selle Italia saddles (though not all their other products) are made in Italy I believe, and their 3D printed models definitely are.
- chrisonabike 10 hours 51 min ago
If you're not on the road with a car, I bet its driver is much less likely to swerve into your space *. Because you're not "in the way"! (Any...
- mdavidford 11 hours 7 min ago
The problem with this argument, though, is that it's just not true....
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20 comments
Perhaps UKCyling could organise a gathering of families who have been impacted by the killing of a cyclist family member, and pressure the new government to introduce changes to the law to protect cyclists from dangerous drivers. A death by dangerous driving law perhaps. Oh hang on. Best let them get on with that death by dangerous cycling law as a priority.
National Road Victim month in Aug. You've never heard of it...?
Sadly whatever happens I don't see much will appear in the news about government and cycling for a while - unless either the Greens or Reform (bonus for knocking down immigrant cyclists!) get elected.
This is farcical. If it had been a pedestrian it would have been prison. This coming so soon after the successful appeal in the Cambridge cyclist manslaughter case shows that the law needs tightening up. How someone can stand in font of a cyclist causing them to swerve in front of oncoming traffic and get killed as a result yet still be cleared of manslaughter is beyond me. The fact that she just walked away without even reporting it says it all.
Unfortunately this isn't a good equivalence. This case seems to be a troubling example of everyone apparently starting from a presumption of "these things happen - we're almost sorry for the driver". However the Auriol Grey case I think you're referring to is a bit more complicated. Albeit mostly a demonstration of utterly lacklustre provision for active transport and abdication of responsibility by the council.
The family said that no one was to blame for the crash and they held “no bad feelings or malice towards the driver of the car”.
Whilst that may be an object lesson in forgiveness, saying that no one was to blame is wrong, not true and misleading.
Lancashire Constabulary was, as usual, far in advance of this 'you're bound to KSI the odd one' trend when in December 2018 they said that the driver 'massively cutting the corner' on the Sainsbury's access road and therefore driving on the wrong side of the road, was only suffering from 'a momentary loss of concentration' when he hit me. I was stationary in the correct position waiting to come out of the exit road and turn right. I was very lucky the driver didn't hit my front wheel and smash the bike back into my pelvis. It's always 'momentary' and a 'couple of seconds' (well put by Aluminium below) because until you hit them, you haven't hit them and were driving correctly- according to the police, the courts and a jury of their 'peers', who are all drivers who think they should get away with 'the odd one'
Nobody just has a few seconds of inattention when driving and in that unlucky single moment in their life unfortunately kills someone. It's a few seconds of inattention followed by another few seconds of inattention then a bit more inattention and getting away with lots of a few seconds of inattention for years and years and then suddenly they have a few seconds of inattention and something bad happens. Then they tell the police and judge that it was just a few seconds of inattention.
Its just out of the playbook of downplaying bad driving. The simple fact is that cyclists aren't even an afterthought most of the time. If that was a car that hit her then both parties would likely be fine. We accept so much bad driving on the basis that most of the time it doesn't result in a death because both parties are protected in cars. When they aren't, the consequences of "a few seconds inattention" are devastating.
Perhaps we should look at it another way eh. How about paying attention for a few seconds whenever you are making a manouvre. Inattention isn't fleeting and rare, its the norm for a lot of people.
At some point, a message needs to be sent out to drivers that they are welcome to be shit drivers as much as ever but they won't be driving for very long if they choose to continue driving dangerously. Kill someone driving. Long prison sentence and banned for life. Dangerous close pass? Large fine and points and when you are caught again you lose your license for year.
I'm by no means anti-helmet (wear one myself but certainly don't believe in making them mandatory, but let's not start the debate again), but why on earth is this even mentioned, it's as pertinent to the charges as whether the deceased was wearing mismatched socks. Any decent judge should immediately point out that any statement regarding a cyclist's choice of protective equipment above and beyond legal requirements does not have any relevance.
Agreed but because rule 59 says cyclists should wear a helmet it puts this requirement on the same level as any other should in the highway code, for example, drivers should give cyclists plenty of room when overtaking. Unfortunately the onus then is on the prosecution to show that a helmet would have been no use in any particular incident which seems beyond the abilities of the CPS.
What we need is for the highway code to specify the circumstances in which a helmet could reduce injuries and I suspect that would be limited to falling off the bike.
Indeed - even though *even* the highway code qualifies the effectiveness I believe this is seen as a proxy for careless and competence of the rider. No helmet? Obviously not taking sensible precautions for their own safety. Perhaps they were rather... careless...
Not got a link now but hasn't this been cited in multiple cases where people died from "catastrophic injuries" or from things other than head injury?
The hypocrisy of motornormatists at any level is just staggering
Can't be true (see the last, rather long, thread on the matter where, regardless of yet another mountain of facts, evidence, analyses shown, cited, developed, at the end it's still "Bahsml!").
To be fair, only a fairly small proportion of it was that*. A large chunk of it was a few people, all broadly against the 'helmetist agenda', arguing the niceties of what could be claimed on the basis of a particular piece of evidence, while not actually agreeing on what they were arguing about. And after one of them had strongly expressed the view that people shouldn't be talking about helmets.
[* For those, like myself, who are a little slower on the uptake, I eventually figured this must be 'but a helmet saved my life' - I guess that's how the kids are writing it these days.]
Don't want to go there again but i'd say less hypocrisy, more that most authorities say so! Plus "it stands to reason" and you can generally find confirmatory anecdata. For the authorities - some can be explained as "something should be done - and here's an easy something (which costs government nothing / doesn't trouble the status quo)". Medics are going to advise on things which *might* help with the immediate issue (they tend not to be debating infra or modal shift - not their focus).
Another tragedy. Five a day is it? We have normalised death on our roads.
The laws around this need to change.
Perhaps something along the lines of:
- if a car, truck or other large road vehicle is involved in a collision with a pedestrian, cyclist or horse, the driver of the vehicle assumes a minimum 50% liability, rising to full liability if there is any concurrent offence (eg speeding, no MOT, DUI)
- if a car, truck or other large road vehicle is involved in a collision with a pedestrian, cyclist or horse and the pedestrian, cyclist or horse/rider is killed or injured, the driver of the vehicle has their licence automatically suspended for six months (followed by re-test) with further penalties determined by whether a a charge of causing death by careless or dangerous driving can be sustained
- the thresholds for careless and dangerous need to be lowered and the sentences for causing death by dangerous driving need to be on par with sentencing for murder and need to include mandatory licence suspension followed by retest.
I doubt it'll happen any time soon, but the reality is that most people selfishly drive in a way that keeps them safe, without necessarily keeping vulnerable users safe. Make the penalties harsh, apply them consistently and without exception (no hardship nonsense) and drivers will have to keep those around them safe if they want to keep their licences.
I agree in general: the idea that hurting or killing someone with your car is somehow different or less bad than doing so with any other item needs to change. My tweaks would be:
On liability, start from the presumption that the less-vulnerable road user (i.e. almost always the controller of the larger vehicle) has 100% liability. It's then for them to prove to the judge that a lesser liability should be found.
Murder requires proof of intent, and I'd be concerned that equating dangerous driving to it would make convictions even harder. Manslaughter carries a maximum life sentence though, and I'd like to see "death by [X] driving" offences removed and instead prosecuted as manslaughter. The badness of the driving should be a sentencing matter rather than defining the offence. (If someone has killed someone by deliberately done something that they should know would kill or seriously injure, that can and should be charged as murder).
You mean like a comprehensive review of road laws? Well we had one in 2014 and nothing changed.
No, most people drive badly/dangerously because the chances of being caught are low and when they are the chances of appropriate punishment are just as low.
Five-year driving ban? That must be a typo because after all she's respectable, showed remorse and you know, these things happen.
Seems incongruous doesn't it? Almost unfair - given everyone seems keen to call this an accident. Even the victim's family.
Also another pointer to what seems the arbitrary nature of the legal system. Mentally comparing this to the recently reported case of the doctor who pulled out at a junction, causing the dead of a cyclist: no charge there at all.
As I understand it the purpose of the charge here was exactly to deal with situations where drivers have "not lived up to the high standards expected". To allow us to deal with those careful, respectable drivers who obviously didn't set out to kill anyone that day... but through their own poor (dangerous) driving, did.
I can only hope that the campaigners here get the engineering changes made and that improves safety.