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Statue of Justice, Old Bailey (licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr by Ronnie Macdonald).jpgCyclist crushed after farm worker failed to secure straw bale to trailer, court told
A farm worker who failed to properly secure a straw bale to a trailer he was towing, resulting in it falling off and crushing a cyclist, has received a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
Cyclist Kenneth Bridle spent two weeks in an induced coma and a total of three months in hospital as a result of the straw bale falling on top of him as he rode past the trailer on a country lane near Exeter in August 2019, reports Devon Live.
Farm worker Matthew Shapcott, aged 39, was taking six straw bales – none of them secured – to a farm in Nether Exe, towing the trailer they were on with a JCB telehandler, a type of vehicle widely used in agriculture and similar to a forklift truck but with a telescopic boom.
Herc Ashworth, prosecuting, told Exeter Crown Court: “The bales of straw were not secured to the trailer by any means, other than their own weight.”
He said that Shapcott, who was transporting the bales from the farm depot to a field around 1 kilometre away, “stopped to allow Mr Bridle to pass and one of the bales fell from the offside of the trailer. Mr Bridle was immediately rendered unconscious.”
Shapcott, who held the relevant safety certificates, told police that while he would often secure the bales using straps if travelling over bumpy terrain, he did not do so in this case because it was a relatively short journey over flat ground.
Mr Bridle, a retired train driver who had been riding his e-bike at the time of the incident, was left with significant damage to his eyesight, as well as impaired speech and memory loss.
In a statement read out to the court, he said: “Above all it is the damage to my sight, the loss of independence and not being able to walk the lanes alone. I will potentially live like this forever.”
Handing down a 12-month jail sentence suspended for 18 months, Judge David Evans told Shapcott: “This was not merely a piece of absentmindedness, it was a deliberate decision you took not to take an obvious safety action which you had engaged in before. You created a relatively brief and obvious danger, especially as regards vulnerable road users and of course you caused very significant harm.
“The bales were not secured to the trailer by the webbing straps which were usually to hand in the vehicle and would have taken just 10 minutes to put in place. In other words the straw bales were dangerously insecure. When you broke to a halt to let the bicycle pass by on the very narrow lane one of the top most precariously balanced bales tumbled on to him.
"This was a case of you uncharacteristically taking a short cut,” the judge added. “Perhaps it was laziness and thereby carrying an obvious risk of catastrophe."
He also banned Shapcott from driving for two years and ordered him to undertake 140 hours of unpaid work.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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29 comments
Yes, dangerous and he knew it was his professional responsibility to secure the load. Regardless of how flat and short the journey might be. He was gambling with other people's safety!
From his own words it sounds like this wasn't a one-off, not that it matters how many times he took short cuts, once is too many. If you endanger the public by knowingly not doing your job properly/safely... and then consequently hospitalising and permanently injuring them the Health and Safety Executive should come down on you like, well... a bale of straw.
I simply cannot fathom how anyone can see this as harsh. The short sentence is suspended and all he really has to do is some unpaid work. Losing his licence is entirely appropriate.
I'm not sure it's being seen as harsh, just relatively to the people who have deliberately sought to do others harm. Wasn't there a lady who drunk drove home from her pub and ran over her boss, didn't lose license as she wouldn't be able to work. Or the person with bald tyres overtaking on a blind bend in the ice and killing cyclists.
Relative to them, this is harsh. As a sentence it could be seen as light...
Cavalier behaviour seems to be all too common amongst drivers of telehandlers and other big agricultural vehicles often with huge trailers overloaded and all too often overturned on the local roundabouts. More than once I have seen precarious stacks of bales let alone drifts of loose straw streaming out behind as they force their way down narrow country lanes.
I get that harvest in particular is a busy time but the mass of these vehicles their immense tyres and often poorly secured loads make them exceedingly dangerous even before they get into the hands of mostly young men under time pressure and working long hours.
Do they even operate under tachograph rules?
The triangle of project management springs to mind
Time/resource/scope.....
Bl00dy farmers: trusting in gravity, mass, and inertia! This'll teach 'im!
I have to say, this is stupidity and a terrible accident, compared to the sentences handed to people drunk, without licences, deliberately knocking cyclists off etc. the sentence seems 'harsh'
A driver over the limit will in all probability get home without incident - but it is a known risk and a stupid thing to do. Just because they haven't killed anyone yet does not make it OK.
Likewise this farm worker had often taken the same dangerous short-cuts before without incident - yet the risks remained obvious and he chose to ignore them.
I think the two situations are very alike.
I agree. The convicted was fully aware of what they were supposed to have done and made an active decision not to do it for their own ease. The farmer knew that he wasn't significantly increasing risk to himself, but was risking others without their consent or knowledge. The result was predictable and thoroughly avoidable, except due to an active decision that was inspired by laziness.
Indeed - at least a drunk driver risks their own safety too. The primary differences between dangerous driving are 1. the driver made the decision sober, 2. they only risked the safety of others.
I thought this was going to be some young lad not a 39 year old.
Not really sure what sentence should be passed other than acting as an unpaid carer for a long period.
Not really sure what sentence should be passed
Prison and a big fine. Joke community work sentences are part of the reason offences against/ injuries to cyclists are not considered 'real offences' because 'they didn't mean to do it'.
Yet another joke sentence!
In this case i have to disagree a bit. While no sentence can ever really offer justice to the family of bereaved, this was a mistake, and unintentional. The driver has still rightly been punished for not taking precautions, and may even lose his job and livelihood for this now.
There was a case a few years back where an old man started his engine on a hospital car park, and the car lunged forward; pinning someone to the wall, and killing them. Obviously the family wanted blood. The case was settled by removing the old man's licence. He was sole carer for a wife with dementia and had no criminal record. He made a mistake. Not good enough for the family of the bereaved, who made multiple appearances in the media to ask for "justice" and attempt to ruin his life. Do we want a legal system that offers justice and fairness, or one that seeks revenge?
Wrong, this was total disregard of health and safety. If he was using a telehandler then I dare say we are not talking small bales of straw but the large round bales that weign a significant amount, hence the reference to one on a spike in the original article.
There can be honest mistakes that lead to unintentional consequences, but the consequences of unsafe loads on vehicles are well known and it is unacceptable to drive such an unsafe vehicle and then declare it "just a mistake" when it predictably causes injury/death to someone else.
Sorry but I have no sympathy with the driver here, he started his car which then lurched forward, why did he not release the key immediately, he also failed to follow basic guidance by putting his car in neutral when he parked and depressing the clutch when starting the engine? Just because he'd got away with bad and lazy habits for a long time doesn't mean he's not responsible for his actions and deserves to lose his licence. The carer part is a red herring, he doesn't need a driving licence in order to care for his wife.
TBH, I'm sick of hearing the the excuse that "he/she is an older driver and made a mistake" and being treat more leniantly because of their age when really they know their standard of driving has fallen but refuse to give up their licence.
I can't comment on the first part since i don't believe that was mentioned in the media for this case. The reason him being a sole carer for a wife with dementia was mentioned is because it came up in sentencing that locking him up for a mistake would leave her in a care home since she can't look after herself and has no one else to help.
I think it's very valid to mention someone's age and their otherwise clean licence and lack of criminal record in sentencing. These people generally get a bit more leeway, since they're obviously not in court often, or career criminals. No point in locking up a pensioner with a clean record for a simple, but horrible, mistake and destroying more lives in the process.
Releasing the key immediately doesn't stop it lurching, thanks to the laws of physics.
I agree he should have put the car in neutral and depressed the clutch when starting, but there are a number of reasons why he might not have done so (it is easy to forget things like that if you are running late for an important appointment for example).
Whilst the consequences are equally terrible, that is way more appropriately classified as a "mistake" (or negligence) than making a deliberate choice to not tie down heavy bales of straw when moving them around.
But it does reduce the distance a car lurches forward, also a matter of physics
But thousands of people do this a day without consequence, so you want blood based on the outcome not the action...
I wasn't aware you knew him personally and had been taking notes on his driving, did you give evidence at the trial?
Now you're just making shit up - how do you know?
1) I do not want blood based on the outcome, I want justice for the victim
2) If you get into good habits, you don't do things like this because you automatically do what you were taught when you learnt to drive, handbrake on & car into neutral when parking up. He lurched forward so the car can't have been in neural or the cluch depressed. Releasing the key would have reduced the amount of travel if the handbrake was on.
3) Virtually all the females in my family group are carers & my father in law cared for my mother in law who had severe dementia so couldn't be left for over 10 years. They all do/did the caring in buildings not in cars.
So no I'm not making things up, I'm making use of my experience
Elderly drivers, of which I will be one soon, should be made to undertake a physical examination and retest at 70 to make sure they are fit to drive and if they are the cause of a fatality not be allowed back on the road until they have had a physical and extended retest. It's for their safety as well as others.
As there was an active decision made not to secure the load, I can't agree that it was unintentional - the load remained unsecured intentionally.
The outcome I grant was unlikely to have been deliberate, however the incident was entirely predictable, and would not have happened had he followed the appropriate guidelines, of which he was entirely aware.
The accident was clearly unintentional. The decision to not secure his load was intentional. I agree with the rest of your point. This person should, and has been punished for what he did.
Now I'm unsure as to your point. Except in the cases where people are deliberately hit, nobody - dangerous drivers, crap drivers, drunk drivers, bullying drivers etc - actually intends to cause the specific injuries that they inflict.
This is not mitigation, as actions that proceed the injury result in an utterly predictable an outcome in broad terms - someone, not you though, maybe seriously injured.
Had you asked the convicted as he was getting in the vehicle "what would happen if that bale fell on someone" he would have been able to reply "well they're about 1/2 to 3/4 of a tonne of densely compacted hay. I'd say they could be seriously injured or killed" without even batting an eyelid. He may well have written a risk assessment about this very occurrence, which would have included the acknowledgement that members of the public have access to the areas in which he was working - the mitigation of which would have been to secure the load....
Did the convicted mean for the injuries to occur to the victim? No, I've already stated that this is unlikely.
Was it an "accident"? No, there was nothing unpredictable about this situation, and, for the convenience of the convicted, deliberate decisions/actions were taken to bypass the mitigations that would have prevented it.
A 'mistake' would have been for the farmer to use straps to secure his load, but then to unknowingly fail to tie the knot properly, or make sure the ratchet was engaged properly before moving off. If the strap had then failed, resulting in the above incident, you could accept that it would've been the result of a mistake. Whilst there's certainly no way you could suggest this was anything other than unintentional, the fact that the farmer CHOSE to drive the vehicle with an unsecured load, knowing what the consequences of that load falling from the trailer could be, well then it was certainly no mistake. His inactions and carelessness resulted in the significant injuries to the cyclist, no matter how unintentional the event may have been.
By definition regretting something you've done is a mistake, so you're overthinking this, and wrong.
Best to stop digging. You got it wrong in your first post.
this was a mistake, and unintentional
Whereas, I have to disagree a lot. This was criminal negligence, and this b****** got away with it.
I agree with you. I think this is less driving legislation, and more an industrial incident. I belive there was a case to answer under Health and Safety legislation.