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news
Statue of Justice, Old Bailey (licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr by Ronnie Macdonald).jpgDriver fiddling with mobile when he ran over cyclist threw phone away to try and hide evidence
A driver who was fiddling with an app on his mobile phone when he ran over a cyclist, causing him serious injuries, threw his phone away immediately after the crash in a bid to hide evidence, a court has heard.
The cyclist, Edward Taylor, sustained a fractured pelvis, right elbow and left wrist and four broken ribs when Geraint Coombes hit him in his Land Rover Discovery Sport on the A469 at Llanbradach on 3 August last year, reports the South Wales Argus.
Coombes, aged 32 and from Caerphilly, initially told police he had left his phone at home but subsequently admitted that he had disposed of the device, saying: “I was changing a song on Spotify and I threw my phone into bushes. I only did this because I panicked.”
He admitted causing serious injury by dangerous driving, and to perverting the course of justice.
Emma Harris, prosecuting, told the court that as well as getting rid of the mobile phone, Coomebes also tried to blame Mr Taylor for causing the crash.
She also read out a victim impact statement from Mr Taylor, who had to spend 11 days in hospital due to his injuries, in which he said: “At the time, my wife was suffering from cancer and I was her main carer.
“This has put a massive strain on my family. My wife’s mother had to come and look after Ruth and our children.
“A cancer charity had paid for us to go on holiday at Butlin’s but we had to cancel it.
“Had this incident not occurred the care for my wife could have been better in her last few months.”
In mitigation, Ed Mitchard said: “The defendant fully accepts responsibility for causing serious injury to Mr Taylor.
“The act of perverting the course of justice was impulsive and it took place seconds after the collision when he was in hysterics.
“When challenged by the police, he came clean with them and took them to where the mobile phone was.”
But sentencing Coombes to 27 months’ imprisonment, Judge Richard Williams said: “You made a most difficult situation infinitely worse for Mr Taylor. His wife had terminal cancer.
“He and his family had been to due to go on holiday shortly after this incident but that had to be cancelled.
“Mr Taylor was also unable to devote himself to look after her in her final months as he and she would have wished.
“You jettisoned your smartphone and persisted with the fiction that you didn’t have a phone on you.
“The police dealt promptly and efficiently with the investigation. They had rumbled the lie you had told them.”
Coombes was also banned from driving for three years, one month and 15 days.
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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21 comments
Put him in a cell and throw away the key, just so he knows what it feels like.
"The act of perverting the course of justice was impulsive and it took place seconds after the collision when he was in hysterics."
cant you see it's me, the driver, that's the victim here
So who has achieved a prosecution for using a hand-held mobile phone while driving? That's a real prosecution with points, as opposed to 'sent a warning letter', 'had a word with him' and 'we've done something but we won't tell you what it was' which are all worthless fictions.
https://twitter.com/MikeyCycling / https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL50HnB_iNgL4fj9aChirAb0eEH_X4X1Gt has had more than a few.
His Youtube channel is full of them.
I take a look every week for fresh Scofflaws being caught and prosecuted.
I'm hoping that for the thousands of micropayments he gets for every view, that he can a least pay for the cameras.
He may have done, but as neither link works I will reserve judgement.
The Twitter link works fine for me. The YouTube one takes me to the Youtube home page.
My girlfriend did. A driver watched video with the phone propped up in front of the instruments of the dash. Prosecuted and convicted based on video evidence. Metropolitan Police area.
I'm sorry, but that whole 'panicking' thing doesn't wash with me. Panicking is driving on in a complete tizz before getting a grip and telling someone what a terrible thing you have done.
Throwing your phone away is a deliberate act of evasion, focussing not on what you have but done, but instead on the object that might nail you. That is reasoned (and despicable), not panicked. 27 months for that seems reasonable, but why such a complete see you next tuesday should ever be allowed to drive again needs some explaining.
Agreed, and it looks like the judge took that view too
I was thinking about all the cyclist deaths where the driver blamed the cyclist and got away with it, just like this guy tried to do, and I bet most of them were lying.
As TWcycle says, of what relevance is the circumstances of the victim to the severity of the punishment? That's for the civil courts to sort out, not the criminal courts. The crime is the same no matter what the effect on the victim.
The stupidity of fiddling with a phone whilst driving.
No-one can credibly claim they are unaware of the dangers caused by distracted driving yet so many otherwise perfectly decent people do it and habitually get away with it that they don't see it as doing anything wrong, feel hard done by if caught and express sympathy at someone elses bad luck in being involved in a RTC whilst using a phone.
I'm pretty sure I could make a decent living on a £10 cut for every driver on a mobile phone that I see daily. Well at least until I am lynched by a mob armed with burning pitchforks and sharpened car keys.
Don't forget they also probably speed and then there is drink and drug driving.
There seems to be something about the motor vehicle that almost encourages law breaking.
Putting the length of the sentence aside, why does the length of the sentence seem to related to the impact on the victim's life at home? Surely it should be based on the offence itself and the injuries sustained by the victim. If I was hit by the driver and sustained the same injuries as the victim above but I was a single person living at home with no caring responsibilities - would the driver have received a smaller sentence for the same offence and injuries caused?
These sentences are a joke. Make the sentences decent and then maybe we'll actually have a deterrent for ruining people's lives by driving like crap.
I think what would make the real difference is there being a near certainty of being caught and convicted. If people were pretty confident that using a mobile phone at the wheel resulted in even one week's jail time every time (or near as) I think behaviour would change.
I seem to remember there was some research indicating that the chance of being caught was the bigger deterrent than the sentence.
sentance wouldn't even need to be that severe. if detection/conviction was 100% confiscation of the phone for a week would be enough.
But conviction rates are the key, where people expect to get caught they don't commit the crime.
Short term confiscation of the phone and the vehicle, perhaps a month for the first offence. That might work.
But there would have to be proper enforcement.
Yes, it's one of the most openly ignored laws. People know they can get away with it and don't know anyone who's ever been done for it. People who don't consider themselves lawbreakers do it. If there were non-unform officers at strategic places on commuter routes, they could catch triple figures every day.
Or, let the Police simply act on video evidence submitted by car/van/bike users rather than often ignoring it. There would of course have to be guidelines as to what was actionable.
Thus, if there was a central address where you could upload your video to and if a successful prosecution took place, a "finders fee" of say £100 would be paid to the person submitting the video.
Nice little earner for the submitter, a cheap and easy way to get morons off of the roads.