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news
Crieff Road, Perth (credit: Google Maps)Driver who “charged through” mini-roundabout and hit cyclist before reversing over her – leaving her with multiple serious injuries – keeps licence
A motorist who “charged” through a mini-roundabout and failed to give way, hitting a cyclist and leaving her with several broken bones and a collapsed lung, has been allowed to keep his licence after initially denying causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
28-year-old Patrycja Gutowska was riding her bike on Crieff Road in Perth at around 8.30am on 5 April 2022 when she was struck at a roundabout by motorist David Knight, who failed to brake when approaching the junction and later admitting entering it when he had no right of way.
According to CCTV footage secured by the police from a shop overlooking where the crash took place, and played to jurors at Perth Sheriff Court this week, Knight – driving a Renault Kadjar – can be seen travelling west along Crieff Road, before “charging” through the mini-roundabout, as Ms Gutowska entered the junction from Feus Road.
In the video, Knight then collides with the cyclist on the roundabout, before slamming on the brakes. It was also alleged in court that the motorist then reversed his car while Ms Gutowska was lying stricken underneath it.
Crieff Road, Perth (credit: Google Maps)The 28-year-old cyclist was rushed to Perth Royal Infirmary with fractures to her sternum and pelvis, as well as bruised and collapsed lungs, the Dundee Courier reports.
Ms Gutowska also suffered a large scalp wound in the crash, which required staples to be closed by a plastic surgery team, and was forced to wear a Miami J collar, designed to limit movement and support her neck, for 12 weeks after the incident.
The court also heard that, after being discharged from hospital 10 days later, she had to use crutches for some time and underwent months of physiotherapy.
In the wake of the incident, Knight was charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving, a charge he denied.
However, one day into his trial at Perth Sheriff Court, prosecutors accepted a guilty plea from the 56-year-old concerning the lesser, amended charge of careless driving.
Following this guilty plea, Sheriff Jennifer Bain KC fined Knight £600 and imposed six penalty points on his licence – meaning he is free to continue driving.
Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen judges conclude that penalty points and a fine are sufficient punishment for apparently careless driving – even following incidents which could have had catastrophic consequences.
In October 2023, a motorist in Somerset similarly accepted six penalty points, a £480 fine, and a victim surcharge totalling £277 for driving “without due care”, after losing control on a bend and almost smashing into a cyclist and another vehicle, having rounded the corner on the verge on the wrong side of the road.
Driver fined for "driving without due care" over incident that almost saw cyclist hit (Avon & Somerset Police) (credit: road.cc)A number of cyclists, in response to Avon and Somerset Police’s social media post advertising the sentencing, criticised the “pathetically weak” punishment, while the rider involved in the harrowing incident, Steve Western, argued that he was “not sure driving without due care was appropriate for that incident, which could have ended so differently”.
“Surely, due care is failing to look properly at a junction causing someone else to have to brake, or maybe close passing a cyclist at a moderate 1-1.5m distance,” added Robin Pickering.
“That looks like clear S2 RTA: driving which falls ‘far below the expected standard’ and which could easily have had fatal consequences. Why the downgrade?”
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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26 comments
There should be a review of the safety of mini-roundabouts, especially on urban A-roads like this one. They were a questionable compromise between safety and traffic flow when they were brought in, during the 70s and 80s, but at least back then most people drove sub-tonne vehicles. The best-selling car was the Ford Escort, which had virtually no side-impact protection, no airbags, and thin A-pillars (which also gave good visibility.) Drivers had to approach such junctions with some caution. Now, the best selling cars are compact SUVs like the Kadjar, nearly double the weight, and so cocooning that drivers have nothing to fear from a mini-roundabout. Purely in terms of self-preservation, they just have to keep half-an-eye out for buses and lorries. Great for overall road injuries figures, but lousy for cyclists. And with judges, prosecutors and juries driving the same kind of vehicles, or bigger, the "there but for the grace of god go I" effect seems to mean not holding people properly to account if the car they bought encourages them drive like an entitled jerk.
There should be a review of the safety of mini-roundabouts...lousy for cyclists
In Lancashire they're largely ignored. The advantage of mini-roundabouts here for drivers is that they can always claim 'I thought I had priority' and cyclists who want to stay alive have to assume that any driver will just charge onwards and bully them out of the way.
There's this from 1997, I'm not aware of anything more recent.
Mini roundabouts were found to be generally safer than other junctions, however they are more dangerous for cyclists.
AIUI an entering-circulating accident [sic] would be when the vehicle entering the roundabout fails to give way to the vehicle circulating.
There should be a review of the safety of mini-roundabouts...lousy for cyclists
Lancashire Constabulary, always at the forefront when it comes to the effective removal of tiresome road traffic bureaucracy (just as Cameron's government was at the forefront in removing tiresome tower-block-cladding bureaucracy), has solved the problem of mini-roundabouts by making it clear to drivers that the best solution is to completely disregard them. (Video now available)
https://upride.cc/incident/pn65hxf_transitconnect_roundaboutignore/
I hope his victim can sue him.
Hopefully she won't have to, as he's been found guilty his insurance company will have to pay up for her injuries; she'll only have to go to court if she deems their offer unacceptable.
Won't she have to make a claim against the other party though?
When I was hit, British Cycling assigned Digby Brown as solicitors... and I'm bloody glad that they did.
First offer from them was for 40grand ... DB managed to secure 150grand.
It took 4 years, and the others insurance settled on the court steps.
Yes, but she won't actually have to take them to court unless they dispute what constitutes reasonable compensation. Was your driver convicted of an offence? I was under the possibly erroneous impression that insurers were more malleable if a conviction was secured as it removes any arguments about culpability. Good to hear you stood out for what you deserved and won, anyway.
Because the driver admitted guilt at the roadside to a PoliceScotland officer, the whole driving aspect was dealt with by fixed penalty points for Careless Driving and a small fine.
The driver didn't have to attend court at any stage in the 4 years his insurance company took to pay out.
[Snip]
I was under the possibly erroneous impression that insurers were more malleable if a conviction was secured as it removes any arguments about culpability.
[Snip]
Certainly in my case (which I accept maybe slightly more complex due to the significant injuries received, the slow recovery process and the payment towards future health care (of which I have been told I *will* need)), that their driver had been issued with a FPN for Careless Driving did not accelerate the process in any way.
They even tried to worm in that I had been negligent by not having a front daytime running light [collision happened at 1755 on an August evening, with significant daylight available and remaining], and that my TBI would have been reduced had I been wearing a helmet.
The light issue was negated by PoliceScotland and the helmet issue was negated by statements from witnesses and the paramedic that gave me CPR that I had been wearing a helmet. This was also compounded by fragments of my helmet being found inside the car, where my head had hit the top of the windscreen and dented the roof.
If an insurance company can find a way of not paying out, they will do so.
These things don't generally wind up in court - that prospect functions as a kind of glue for the months / years of wrangling over money that carries on, usually with the vulnerable road user licking their wounds and the driver carrying on as though nothing had happened. Any criminal conviction is a help as it reduces the scope to argue over the facts.
Surely actually hitting another road user PROVES their driving was dangerous! There's no opinion involved...
Yes, if someone was injured as a result, the behaviour was dangerous. Which seems utterly bleedin' obvious and applies to every other field of human activity apart from driving.
That is unbelievable. 6 points for all that distress, injury, damage, bone fracture and emotional pain. Not to mention the cost to the NHS. Unberfuckinlievable. Where is the deterrent? Where is the punishment?
Seriously missing, that's where the deterrent and punishment are. To add insult to injury, this appears to have been almost completely ignored by the media: I can only find one report and that's behind a paywall.
He'll probably never be able to afford insurance again, so if he drives, it will be illegally.
As I and others have said many times, if you injure someone with a car, your licence should be suspended until they've fully recovered, as a minimum: personally I think it should be at least double that.
Sadly, not surprised by this.
The offence of Causing Serious Injury by Careless Driving came into effect in June 2022, this incident took place in April 2022 so the driver could not be convicted of that specific offence.
Dissapointing that the prosection didn't push for Causing Serious Injury by Dangerous Driving.
I imagine that the prosecution wasn't sure that they'd get dangerous past the jury or the magistrate, so accepted careless as a "slam/dunk". It also meant that their numbers for successful prosecutions look better...
One really has to wonder how long this sort of "justice'' goes on before some seriously injured cyclist upon recovery buys a big junker of a truck and goes on the hunt for the person who ran her/him down. The criminal justice systems fails people only so long before a victim, sadly, decides to take matters into her/his own hands.
Absolutely. Or even a relative of the victim. In so many of these cases there is no justice.
Institutionally anti-cyclist procurator fiscal. And sheriff
Even if they accepted a plea one level down, to "causing serious injury by careless driving" it would have alolowed consideration of a wider range of sentencing.....
How on earth can the charge go from causing serious injury by dangerous driving, to Careless Driving!!!!!! FFS her injuries were fractures to her sternum and pelvis, as well as bruised and collapsed lungs. The PF needs to be taken to task over this, that's disgusting to accept a plea of careless driving. Also I am sick to the back teeth of this cop out of being able to change a plea during the trial, this needs to stop.
In this case you should not blame the judge, but the prosecutors.
The judge can only sentence according to the sentencing guidelines for the offense.
It was the prosecution that chose to accept the guilty plea to the lesser offence.
For them it will go down on their stats as successful prosecution, free them up to work on other cases and avoids the risk of failing to secure a prosecution for the more serious offense for which the criteria are highly subjective and there is a real possibility that the offender would have been found not guilty.
Does the judge have to accept the guilty plea to the lesser charge? In the US they don't have to (although they usually do accept it.)
Same here, the judge can rule that the defendant should go to trial on a more serious charge even if prosecutors are prepared to accept a guilty plea to a lesser offence, but in practice they pretty much always accept the CPS decision.