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news
B6136 Ferrybridge Road, Knottingley (Google Street View)Driver handed suspended sentence for cutting across and killing cyclist claimed he was “blinded by the sun” before fatal crash – despite motorist behind saying she spotted victim
A motorist who claimed he was “blinded by the sun” when he cut across and struck a cyclist, who died that evening from his injuries – despite another driver who was following close behind telling officers that she saw the cyclist approaching – has been handed a 12-month suspended prison sentence.
According to Judge Simon Batiste, who also ordered motorist Trevor Moran to complete 15 rehabilitation days and 200 hours of unpaid work, cyclist Robin Newman “should have been visible” and “had no chance at all” when the driver moved across and hit him as he descended a hill in West Yorkshire.
58-year-old Moran admitted to causing the death of the cyclist and father-of-two in September 2021 by careless driving at Leeds Crown Court yesterday. He was initially charged with causing death by dangerous driving and was due to stand trial, but later admitted the lesser charge of careless driving, leading to his suspended sentence, the Yorkshire Evening Post reports.
According to prosecutor Heather Gilmore, Mr Newman was a “keen and experienced” cyclist who was enjoying a morning ride from his home in Doncaster as he rode along the B6136, between Ferrybridge and Knottingley in West Yorkshire, at around 10.20am on 22 September 2021.
As the cyclist descended the hill at 26mph, Moran – travelling in the opposite direction – turned across him into Vale Crescent, giving Mr Newman no time to brake or react. The father-of-two collided with the passenger side of Moran’s car, and was catapulted over his handlebars.
After being assisted by passers-by, including Moran, Mr Newman was taken to hospital with several internal injuries, including a haemorrhage caused by a laceration to his liver, and died later that evening.
During his interview with police officers, Moran claimed that he did not see Mr Newman approaching due to the “glare from the sun”. However, a driver who was following behind him told officers that she had spotted the cyclist before the fatal crash.
Mitigating, Allan Armbrister said Moran, who has 13 previous convictions for 30 offences, was remorseful for his actions and claimed that he was a hard-working man, who understood that immediate prison was a possibility.
In court this week, Judge Simon Batiste told the motorist: “He [Mr Newman] was an extremely experienced cyclist. I make it clear he did absolutely nothing wrong that day, whatsoever.
“He was dressed in a bright-pink cycling top and helmet. He was therefore appropriately dressed. He should have been visible. He had no chance at all. Somehow you clearly did not see Mr Newman cycling down towards you.”
The judge sentenced Moran to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, and ordered him to complete 15 rehabilitation days and 200 hours of unpaid work.
In a victim impact statement read to the court, Mr Newman’s wife said: “We were soulmates. We could never imagine life without each other.
“The children miss Rob every day. I feel like I died that day as well. I exist to merely look after the children and drag us out of the pit we are in. We are all absolutely devastated by the loss of Rob.”
In June, after a very similar collision which took place just 40 miles down the road in Sheffield, a motorist was handed a suspended prison sentence and a five-year driving ban when 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 downhill at around 30mph 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.
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.
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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42 comments
Highway Code Rule 237
"Keep your vehicle well ventilated to avoid drowsiness. Be aware that the road surface may become soft or if it rains after a dry spell it may become slippery. These conditions could affect your steering and braking. If you are dazzled by bright sunlight, slow down and if necessary, stop."
Highway Code Rule 0:
"(a) Don't drive like a tw@t; and (b) do everything you can not to kill any other road user!"
Thankfully for me, when I was hit by a driver 'blinded by the sun' I was only knocked into the verge (which was thankfully soft) but the police accepted her excuse, that the sun was in her eyes and she'd forgot her sun glasses. She gave me the excuse first and I just about exploded but kept it to the highway code (aka common sence) 'dazzled by bright sunlight, slow down and if necessary, stop' :-\
“He was dressed in a bright-pink cycling top and helmet. He was therefore appropriately dressed."
No comment on how the motorist was dressed then?
The judge said of the cyclist, "He should have been visible." The implication of this comment is that the judge accepts that the cyclist was somehow not visible. This is the problem, the judge accepts that the cyclist was invisible to the motorist, and so ... suspended sentence.
Indeed, and problem is "was visible" is pragmatically judged by "if they were not seen, they were not visible" ... ah, I think we've found the nub.
Unfortunately in reality a) cyclists may be harder to see than cars because visually smaller / often slower-moving, but most importantly b) as drivers we *train ourselves to pay attention to the other motor vehicles*. Most places people mostly see other motor vehicles on the roads, not cyclists, so even a careful driver will mostly get reinforcement on one type of pattern.
What about pedestrians? I think we're primed to check in *certain environments* / locations.
Conclusion is that the way to safety is ... exactly how places (and county) with mass cycling do it - avoid any interaction between drivers and cyclists in high speed limit environments, and install very consistent infra at junction points. Then the frequency of encounters with cyclists (and fact that drivers are likely to cycle themselves) should help keep their observation skills.
That's also annoying as it is using "visibility" as a passive property of the cyclist when it's far more to do with the active "looking" of the driver. If you don't look properly, then you're not going to see a cyclist.
I think that's sloppy language, is the judge not suggesting there is no reason for the driver not to have been able to see the cyclist? Rather than saying I agree the cyclist was not visible, can't understand why it's baffling.
'War on the motorist'? My arse! 🤬
He seems to "work" in waste disposal and his comment on his Facebook page yesterday is attached...
It's really strange how some people still have their privacy settings set so that any random stranger can see anything they've posted, or even like / comment on said posts
His profile picture says "staying home, saving lives".
If only he had stayed at home. Not fit to be let out.
How can we get lifetime driving bans to be introduced into the law?
Spend more money on politicians than the oil and motor industries do
Sad but mostly true - it's about influence, and "concentrations of money" are important there. Cycling? Tends to the "cheap compared to other modes" and "distributed".
I think those are virtues (also "positive health benefits and lower potential for harm") and we can set up systems which reinforce their value ... but from where we are now that doesn't happen spontaneously. Until the fuel / power runs out / permanent gridlock. Or far more people - ideally children - are being killed. And looking at the US at the start of the previous century even that can be spun around to blame the victims...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-06-14/citylab-daily-how-...
I suppose just getting the laws we do have enforced would be a start. It seems you can drive appallingly and even the ridiculously short bans we have are almost never handed out.
Not just that but the inconsistency across forces.
West Yorks Police manage to deal with over 70% of Op Snap reports through courses, fixed penalties or courts.
Essex Police is just over 30% for July 2024 (In July 2023 60% of reports by cyclists resulted in a notice of intended prosecution).
I'm trying to remember where I read about suggestions for improvements to the Op Snap submission system. It included the option for users to have an account, speeding up multiple submissions and giving the opportunity to track what's happening with them.
In addition to that, there either needs to be better and more uniform training for those who review the videos, or the initial screening (at least) needs to be handled by a central service that doesn't just understand the rules, but also has adequate sympathy for victims, especially when it comes to near misses.
I think most of us understand that to take forward a prosecution there needs to be a certain level of evidence, so more thought given to how to best deal with situations where it's borderline or looks bad, but there's not quite enough to justify prosecution would be helpful. I'm OK with warning letters in those circumstances, but warning letters need to be considered in the event of a future complaint. Where evidence is ambiguous, constructive feedback on what would make a future submission less ambiguous should be provided.
I agree with the idea of being able to create an account. It's surprising how much time can be wasted re-entering the same information over and over again when you are reporting multiple incidents. I've had times when I've reported six drivers in one day, that's an hour of my time filling in the online form alone before I talk about editing the video ready for submission.
I also think there should be just one portal for all police forces. That way there's no need for an individual to have to figure out what force they should be contacting if they are not in the area in which they live, which can easily be a problem if you're driving. And, from personal experience, I've become aware that the portal for the Lancashire Police is very different to the one used by Greater Manchester Police. Whilst, the Greater Manchester Police portal is almost the same as the one used by London's Metropolitan Police. I find that really odd considering we're supposed to live in the same country!
How I edit the videos for the GMP is also different to how I edit for the Lancashire Police. I've had to learn what each of these two forces like and dislike in the submissions I make.
I've become aware that the portal for the Lancashire Police is very different to the one used by Greater Manchester Police
The portal for Lancashire Constabulary is just the bin. Show us a case where it can be confirmed that they took genuine action over an offence against you when you were cycling!
Mitigating, Allan Armbrister said Moran, who has 13 previous convictions for 30 offences, was remorseful for his actions and claimed that he was a hard-working man,....
I don't understand how someone with that record is still allowed to drive, and neither can I find anything in the article about Moran being banned, made to do a re-test or anything else about stopping him being prevented from killing again. He is clearly not fit to be in charge of a machine that can and does kill and should be prevented from ever doing so again.
Rather a weak sentence given the fact that it was proved that he lied by saying the sun was in his eyes.
We have to accept that some people don't have the disposition / attention span / temperament to be a safe driver. If anyone is serious about vision zero then they should not hold a license.
I contacted Duncan Dollimore of Cycling UK a few years ago, putting forward my suggestions for amending Rule 93 of the Highway Code, which is totally pathetic😡 Perhaps CUk and BC will push for this.
Why was he not banned? Sentencing guidelines say ban of at least 12 months obligatory.
Maybe prison sentence was suspended as prisons are full.
Driver
CPS
Judge
The system.
This cyclist and his family was failed by everyone, execpt maybe the police. Disgusting.
Firstly heartfelt commiserations to the family. Secondly I really will have to stop reading this site. I'm getting so so angry. Justice my a**e.
13 previous convictions for 30 offences ...
...and then kills somebody.
Just what does somebody have to do, to be robustly dealt with?
Hold up a few motorists on the M25.
Or just plan on holding up a few motorists on the M25
Commiserations to Mr Newman`s family. The thing is crime has been 'legalised' in the UK. The criminal justice system has been, deliberately, run into the ground ; along with every other publicly funded body. That said, 13 convictions later, maybe, even though our prisons are full, it's time for a bit of porridge.
I used to be a keen cyclist but don't go out anymore : potholes, close passes, lack of police action, the desire to stay alive, the wish not to have my wife on edge.
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