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news
McLaren 540C (CC licensed by emperornie via Wikimedia)Journalist who seriously injured cyclist while test-driving McLaren supercar loses appeal against jail sentence
A lifestyle journalist who seriously injured a cyclist when she was test-driving a McLaren supercar has lost an appeal against the length of her jail sentence.
Australia’s Daily Telegraph reports that Amelia Hungerford was sentenced in July 2019 to 12 months’ imprisonment with no parole for seven months, after pleading guilty to dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm.
In May 2018, she left cyclist James Tan with serious leg and facial injuries after crashing into him in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in New South Wales where she was attending a media event for Signature Luxury Travel & Style.
Dismissing her appeal this week, Judge Helen Syme said that Hungerford and her passenger in the car had behaved like “excited children at a fun park rather than grown-ups test driving a motor vehicle” as she test-drove the £195,000 McLaren Sport Series Coupé.
GoPro footage from the car showed that Hungerford, now 31, had problems starting the vehicle and that she was on the wrong side of the road as she rounded a bend, crashing into Mr Tan.
Upholding the original sentence, Judge Syme said: “She estimates her speed being '50 or 60' but I observe the advisory sign was 25kph – she did not recall seeing this sign.”
Hungerford, who was released from prison last year on conditional bail, had already served seven months in jail prior to appealing her sentence.
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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13 comments
Joking ...
Hilarious. How's the male/female ratio in your cycling club? Oh really, that low? I wonder why.
Well, there's only one member in my cycling club.
You can join if you want, but you must have a sense of humour and be able to read.
Maybe, my cycling club isn't for you then. You're banned 😉
Not sure the self-own of "no-one will ride with me" is the win you think it is, but no worries, I will wear my ban with pride.
So she appealed to shorten the sentence she had already served? Doesn't seem the sharpest tool in the box.
The sentence was 12 months but she was out on bail. Perhaps a sucessful appeal would remove restrictions and the chance of being returned to prison.
not driving like a tool again would remove that chance as well. Seems to have a higher certainty of success than a court appeal.
Or maybe not for a journalist routinely enjoying supercar tests like a theme park visit.
Presumably another violation would have breached her parole and lead to her having to serve the rest of her sentence, so she was trying to get her sentence reduced to the time already served as a guard against future convictions (which doesn't fill one with optimism about the way she sees herself driving in future).
So you're saying she felt it prudent to hedge against breaching the parole conditions within what, five months? Yikes!
Hey - maybe she can now report on a different lifestyle? "Prison cells of the not-rich and not-famous", anyone?
Her biggest mistake was not having the incident in the UK...she would have simply received a written warning and poor old James Tan would have spent the year (her sentence) trying to get the police to do anything more.
It's weird isn't it - apparently motorists (and especially police) are way more hostile to people on bikes in oz. And yet the judge quite rightly dismisses the appeal. I can't see in this country it even getting to the stage of more than a fine and points
It's not right, people literally get away with murder here.