$l500 fine: road fatality sequel

Press, 31 March 1983, Page 9

$l500 fine: road fatality sequel

A young Mayfield men who, while driving his car from a hotel at Lincoln, towards Lincoln College, struck a bicycle on which two girl students of the college were travelling, was fined $l5OO when he appeared for sentence in the District Court yesterday on a fatal driving charge. The defendant, Matthew Paul Daly, aged 20, a Lincoln College student at the time, had been found guilty after a defended hearing of a charge of driving with an excess blood-alcohol and, by an act or omission, causing the death of another student, Tina Jeanette Davies, aged 18, at Lincoln on the late evening of Friday, September 10. In addition to the $l5OO

fine Judge Paterson yesterday disqualified the defendant from driving for two years. Imposing sentence, he said it was the defendant’s undue curiosity as to the identity of two girl students on a bicycle who he had just overtaken, which led to the accident, in which he struck a cyclist and passenger ahead. Evidence at the defended hearing had been that after overtaking a bicycle ridden by a Lincoln College student, and with another seated on the back carrier in Ellesmere Junction Road, Lincoln, on the evening of September 10 the defenuent turned to see if he recognised them. His car was seen by a following motorist to veer towards the foot-

path, and strike another bicycle with two other students on it. The rider, Julie May Hills, suffered severe concussion and spent five days in hospital while the passenger, Miss Davies, suffered head injuries and died at the scene. Counsel (Mr D. I. Jones) submitted in mitigation of penalty on the defendant that the offence did not justify a custodial sentence. There was not a large amount of liquor involved, and no evidence that he was incapable of driving, although he was over the legal limit. He had not driven aggressively. Mr Jones said there were strong mitigating factors ir the offence. There was no evidence of speeding, and

the girls on the bicycle were difficult to see. The defendant had suffered great anguish as a result of Miss Davies’s death. He had withdrawn from his university studies, and from social life. He was of impeccable character, and was a sincere, clean-living, hardworking young man brought up with a strong sense of responsibility. The Judge said the charge was a serious one, and in most of these cases nothing less than a custodial sentence was appropriate in the public interest, even for a first offender. The Judge said that the defendant’s alcohol ratio was 132 milligrams. He said that his carelessness, no doubt induced by

alcohol, was “an inadvertence matter,” The Judge said that while he had held that the defendant should have known the cyclist was ahead, it was not an easy observation to IDdkCt The defendant’s undue curiosity as to the identity of the cyclist and passenger he had just overtaken meant that he was not looking ahead to see the other cycle, and he was careless in this regard. The Judge said that the defendant’s personal circumstances in other ways were “first rate” and the lapse was out of character. The case was an exceptional one for this type of offence, and an alternative to a custodial sentence could be considered.