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Parkside, Darlington (Google Maps)“Callous” road rage driver, who left cyclist lying in road with life-changing injuries after deliberately slamming on brakes, jailed for 21 months
A motorist has been branded “callous” and “a danger to other road users” by a judge, after he close passed a cyclist and deliberately slammed on his brakes twice, causing the rider to smash into the back of his vehicle, before leaving his victim lying in the middle of the road with a broken pelvis.
Michael Evers, who was driving whilst disqualified and uninsured at the time of the shocking road rage incident on 1 April 2022, was sentenced this week to 21 months in prison and banned from driving for two years upon his release, the Northern Echo reports.
Evers was driving on Parkside in Darlington, County Durham, when he passed the cyclist, who works as a hospital porter, on a mini roundabout.
After the cyclist protested what Recorder Anthony Kelbrick described as Evers’ “inconsiderate driving”, the motorist – captured on the rider’s helmet camera – deliberately swerved in front of the cyclist, before weaving across the road ahead of him.
Evers then slammed on his brakes twice, causing the cyclist to crash into the rear of his vehicle. Following the collision, the 48-year-old drove off, leaving the stricken cyclist lying in the middle of the road, where other motorists came to his aid.
> Cyclist spat at and knocked off bike by road rage driver
The cyclist was later taken to hospital, where he was treated for a broken pelvis. He was forced to take time off work to recover from his injuries, which have been described as having a potentially long-lasting impact on his health.
Evers, meanwhile, was arrested two weeks after the incident when a police officer spotted him driving the Volkswagen Golf involved in the collision in Darlington.
He later pleaded guilty to driving whilst disqualified, causing assault occasioning actual bodily harm, dangerous driving, driving with no insurance, failing to stop after an accident, and failing to report an accident.
“You are a danger to other road users,” Recorder Anthony Kelbrick told Evers during sentencing at Teesside Crown Court this week.
“What you did on that day was a deliberate act of road-rage, when another road user protested about your inconsiderate driving.
“You must have known that the victim had been knocked off his bike, but you callously drove off leaving him in the road badly injured. The effect your actions have had on him were grave and the court has heard of the long-lasting, possibly permanent, impact it has had on him.”
In a victim impact statement, the cyclist criticised both the motorist’s initial driving and his shocking reaction, and also noted that his injuries have had a devastating effect on his life.
“I want to say that because you couldn’t be bothered to wait a matter of seconds behind a cyclist, you put me in danger,” the cyclist said.
“Because of your actions you left me lying in the middle of the road and you didn’t even have the decency to check I was okay or to ring an ambulance for me.”
> Stagecoach bus driver allegedly punched cyclist to the ground during road rage attack
Sam Faulks, mitigating, urged the judge to pass a suspended sentence for the road rage attack, and argued that “these serious offences were committed in the heat of the moment – they were not pre-planned, not pre-meditated, nor were they sophisticated”.
He continued: “He understands the overwhelming price of his stupidity, he is deeply sorry and mortified about what he has done.”
As well as being jailed for 21 months, Evers has been banned from driving for a further two years upon his release from custody.
Despite the shocking nature of the incident, similar road rage attacks on cyclists are becoming increasingly common.
Earlier this month, Dorset Police launched an appeal for witnesses after a driver allegedly knocked a cyclist off his bike and spat at him during an “incident of road rage”.
According to the police, a man in his 20s was cycling on the A31 towards Ringwood, approaching a temporary lane closure, when the driver of a green or grey Volvo estate “approached at speed and braked heavily, before sounding his horn at the cyclist”.
The cyclist initially rode away, before a collision was subsequently reported near the Sainsbury’s petrol station in Ferndown involving both men. While the rider fortunately did not sustain any serious injuries, the driver did get out of his vehicle to spit at the cyclist before leaving the scene.
In February, we reported that a Stagecoach driver in Swindon allegedly left his bus to punch a cyclist to the ground. Wiltshire Police and the bus company said they would investigate after a witness reported the driver becoming “impatient” at a cyclist and their 11-year-old son for not using a cycle lane.
A month earlier, a video of a fuming driver confronting a cyclist went viral when the motorist forgot to apply his handbrake, causing the roadside argument to be briefly halted as he raced to prevent his car from rolling away.
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.
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40 comments
The defence lawyer should be jailed for such a pathetic mitigation statement.
No. His job is to defend his client to the best of his ability. The mitigation statement was pathetic because the scumbag was bang to rights and that was, in fact, the best defence he could come up with. However you could maybe argue that the judge should be jailed if he based his judgment at all upon it.
The perpetrator has regrets over his actions now it says. I bet he does. He's got time in jail followed by a two year driving ban. I'm sure he's kicking himself over what he did. But I very much doubt he has any concern over the injuries he caused to his victim.
Maybe I'm just a cynic.
Driving whilst disqualified should be an instant lifetime ban.
The sentencing guideline for driving whilst disqualified is an immediate custodial sentence. While life bans sound like an excellent plan and do fulfill our desire for retribution and punishment they do nothing to ensure safer driving. Those subject to them eventually flout their bans and remain bad drivers which is why no one receives a life ban anymore; they just don't work as a road safety measure. It would be much better to rehabilitate poor drivers into becoming better citizens and better drivers. That of course costs money, as all forms of rehabilitative justice do, and isn't an area Governments of either stripe have been keen to invest in.
The problem you see with long / lifetime bans is that "they don't work". I'd suggest that is because there is (effectively) no enforcement. However your proposed better alternative also doesn't work because currently there is no suitable rehabilitation (and it's difficult to see that happening) AND no enforcement. Even if there was money, time and staff to make whatever "rehabilitation" work it still requires enforcement to ensure that you don't reoffend (or are much less tempted to reoffend) while that rehabilitation is taking place.
That is difficult since we have built our culture and (over several generations) our living environments around driving. We live in a driveogenic environment; all social cues are prompting you to travel around a lot, mostly using a car. Driving really isn't seen as a potentially dangerous activity requiring a serious approach to each trip.
I agree that this is a very difficult issue. I wouldn't want us to lock large numbers of people up as that is very costly and just defers the problem (some people may not be safe to be at large however). Currently it's clearly too easy to ignore bans, not bother to get a licence / insurance / MOT etc. Sadly this is likely not even on most political parties' priority lists.
Is that the sound of a nail being struck on the head?
Short custodial sentence involving mandatory rehabilitation.
I don't see the point, somebody who has no problem with flouting a 6 month ban will most likely have no problem with flouting a lifetime one.
The point is that they can be immediately taken off the road and sent to prison if they are ever caught. The problem we have is the police not putting enough effort into road crime, so we should be fixing that.
If people refuse to respect the traffic laws, then we shouldn't just scrap them because some people will flout them, we should instead focus on increasing traffic policing.
Exactly. I'm not in general in favor of custodial sentences as they are expensive and don't rehabilitate offenders. However they are needed to protect the public at large from dangerous criminals, which is what repeat driving offence perpetrators are.
I think as a general rule, people would be happier if those avoiding jail for reasons when the sentencing guidelines suggest imprisonment were subject to increased driving bans - and some of the budget for jail time was transferred to the probation service who should be responsible, in cooperation with the police, for ensuring that the miscreants are complying with the terms of their probation which should cover there period on ban. Someone with an extended driving ban due to a past offence should face both prison for the original offence (as they haven't complied with the terms for leniency) and a further term for driving whilst disqualified, as that is a separate offence, but it seems that often the courts are reluctant to properly consider multiple offences,
The light sentence is what stands out here but there are other things to discuss.
Firstly : would the driver even have been caught had the cyclist not had a camera, let alone been found guilty of all the charges.
Secondly : the incident was initiated by inconsiderate driving around the cyclist. It is entirely possible that this incident could have been avoided if cyclists trusted the police to take action on submitted footage.
As things stand the cyclist may have felt they had to let the driver know about the standard of driving instead of simply sending in the footage and letting the police do their job. If only the police would take action when such driving is reported to them this would not have been necessary.
Having video evidence and/or independent witness evidence is crucial to identifying and prosecuting offenders; even if a victim identifies the offender, without evidence, plod will just state your word against theirs, so no action taken.
even if a victim identifies the offender, without evidence, plod will just state your word against theirs, so no action taken
Video evidence was only stated by the police to be valuable when nobody had it, and they could indeed deploy the 'your word against his' dodge. The police entered really disgruntled mode when stabilised HQ video became available, and they had to resort to other ways of binning complaints. Demanding long lengths of video 'before and after' deterred people for quite a while, along with the 'video must be completely unmodified after coming out of the camera' (GoPro Hero 7 Black FHD video comes out of the camera at about 500 MB/minute) dodge. They limited the size of video which the police website could handle so that you couldn't send it in, and took to demanding DVDs at your own expense which you knew they would just glance at for a few seconds at best, posted at your own expense.
Now that these obstructions have been largely circumvented, they just resort to ignoring offences and refusing to respond and generally doing a poor job- you have all seen how competent Lancashire police was over the Nicola Bulley drowning!
Has he actually got a good lawyer to offer a guilty plea or a good prosecutor to go for that assault offence?
Assault occasioning ABH is the one which can be "reckless" - so no need to prove motive. I was surprised it was not GBH - but Assault with intent to cause GBH (bearing in mind the broken pelvis / life changing injury) requires proof of intent.
Well it sounds like the intent was captured on camera
Not true. A section 20 offence (Offences Against the Person Act 1861) is GBH but does not require intent. A section 18 offence is more serious and does require intent. But I expect the prosecution thought the ABH charge was more likely to result in conviction.
Sam Faulks, mitigating, urged the judge to pass a suspended sentence for the road rage attack, and argued that “these serious offences were committed in the heat of the moment – they were not pre-planned, not pre-meditated, nor were they sophisticated”.
How can this ever be a mitigation for a road rage charge? The entire point of criminalising road rage is to discourage people from acting "in the heat of the moment." If they were planned or premeditated actions, they would by definition not be "road rage," they would be assault or attempted murder.
https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/11643196.gang-stole-460-000-worth-4x4s-...
Same man? - 18 months for handling stolen goods in 2014
8 months suspended for 18.
A bogan, who flouts convention by driving without insurance, which is an impropriety so heinous that it is often used to condemn cyclists, is rightly described as "callous" and "dangerous" by a judge.
That's great, but I suspect another driver who is equally callous and dangerous, but has insurance and drives a nice car, wouldn't get such a condemnation. And they'd probably receive a slap on the wrist. They might not even get to court, if they wear the right tie, instead of a tracksuit.
I don't understand how it's such a light sentence.
Leaving someone for dead in the road should at the very least entail never being allowed to drive (not that he was) again. Should have been at least 5 years inside.
I would like to agree, in any sane society it should be longer, but unfortunately when reading the article the thought going through my mind was why he was given a custodial sentence, is there something in his background? does he have previous convictions? And lo, it appears he may have as linked to by norris.
Judge: "Don't do it again! Or else we'll... we'll... we'll ban you for even longer!"
Mr Evers: <shrug>
So he's driving around uninsured and disqualified but still thinks he has the moral high ground when a cyclist criticises his (illegal, dangerous, inconsiderate) driving?
I don't know whether to admire or despise barristers in these cases. I understand they are not permitted to turn down cases they are qualified for, and they are required to undertake best endeavours to represent the client effectively, and in this case it probably took hours to come up with something...
Why are they permitted to lie on behalf of their clients?
In some ways the system actually requires them to lie on behalf of their clients. The role is to represent their client's version of what happened, regardless of whether it is backed up by the evidence. I suspect in this case the reason he pleaded guilty was legal advice that the evidence was irrefutable, and the way to minimise the sentence was to accept the charges and then the barrister could say they were sorry in mitigation.
Fortunately the judge saw through that.
Unfortunately the scales grew back over his eyes just in time to pass this meagre (21 months.) and meaningless (2 year ban.) sentence.
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