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news
Taxi sign (licensed CC BT 2.0 by Ross Davidson on Flickr, image cropped).PNGTaxi driver given suspended sentence for deliberately hitting cyclist who called him a “fat f**k”
A taxi driver has been handed a suspended prison sentence and disqualified from driving for two years after deliberately striking and injuring a cyclist who had slapped his car bonnet and called him a “fat f**k” during an argument concerning the motorist’s dangerous driving.
57-year-old Martin Godfrey drove into cyclist Paul Doody, throwing him off his bike and over a wall, in what the former taxi driver’s barrister described as a “moment of madness” in Cardiff last year, WalesOnline reports.
The road rage incident, which took place on 27 June 2021, occurred after Mr Doody, who was cycling on Colchester Avenue, Penylan, in the east of the Welsh capital, sensed that the motorist – in the words of prosecutor Ieuan Bennett – “was driving far too close to him, giving him no room at all”.
On Tuesday, Cardiff Crown Court heard that, after stopping at a set of traffic lights, the cyclist slapped the wing mirror of Godfrey’s Jaguar to draw the motorist’s attention to the lack of distance between the two road users. However, that warning failed to deter the taxi driver, who continued to drive alongside Doody in a manner the cyclist found “intimidating”.
Doody then smacked the bonnet of Godfrey’s car, prompting the taxi driver to shout: “Don’t touch my f*****g car”.
The cyclist replied, “You’re too f*****g close, move away, move the f**k away”, before reportedly calling the motorist a “f*****g c***” and a “fat f**k”.
Footage was then played to the court of Godfrey pulling his car to the right, away from the cyclist, before swinging to his left into Mr Doody, who was thrown over his handlebars and a nearby wall.
The cyclist suffered tenderness to his left collarbone and left shoulder joint due to the collision, as well as swelling and reduced movement in his arm.
Godfrey initially drove off after striking Doody before later returning to the scene, where he claimed to witnesses that the cyclist attacked him first. One passer-by, however, told him that “he hit your vehicle, he didn’t hit you”.
> Suspended sentence for Sheffield taxi driver who drove at cyclist and "caused her to fall"
The taxi driver, who appeared “agitated, confused and breathless”, told police that he left the scene because he was “physically unwell” and wanted to avoid a confrontation with the cyclist. He also initially denied assaulting the victim but later pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and dangerous driving.
Defence barrister Kevin Seal told Cardiff Crown Court that his client, who has previous convictions for wounding, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and failure to surrender, acted “out of character”.
Seal said the incident was a “moment of madness” and that injuring the cyclist was the “last thing Mr Godfrey wished”. The barrister also noted that, due to the collision, the motorist had lost his job as a taxi driver, which he described as a the “mainstay” of his life.
Sentencing Godfrey to eight months in prison suspended for two years, as well as disqualifying him from driving for two years and ordering him to carry out a ten-day rehabilitation activity and 120 hours of unpaid work, Recorder Carl Harrison said: “This was a deliberate move to knock a cyclist off his bike after he hit your bonnet.
“You did this out of anger, you lost your temper. You were in a car, he was a cyclist, you have a responsibility to other road users, particularly those more vulnerable than you.”
The “moment of madness” excuse was also used by Sheffield taxi driver Iftikhar Ahmed following a very similar incident in 2018. Ahmed was handed a suspended sentence for driving at a female cyclist following a verbal altercation, causing her to fall off her bike and suffer a sprained wrist and a bruised hip.
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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My mom does not like swearing, and I've never heard her swear. However growing up, whilst not tolerating us swearing (ok, it may not have stuck with me) she had two exceptions.
-Art (which she raised when asked to explain to teachers why I was singing Time)
-Pain/fear/anger as a human response.
So the swearing pass the mom test because the the profanity police appear to be down playing the murderous intent, the murderous intent was clearly apparent for a while.
It's also worth noting the accuracy, he was a fat and a complete fucker.
This lady on crutches failed to give way to her drivist overlord and hit his car with her stick. Failed to conduct themselves with civility.
https://twitter.com/NoContextBrits/status/1565080307681951744
Please note extreme swearing from the start !
A couple of years ago, I was walking down a wet, narrow country lane. We'd seen a car attempting to reverse out of their drive, but made such a pig's ear of it we carried on. A couple of minutes later they came up behind us. I assessed the sides of the road and decided it was too slippery to stand to one side, looked ahead and saw a suitable passing place. The car revved and drove at me. I turned and did a Gandalf. The driver was a woman in her 70s and she went ballistic, telling me that walkers should make way. I calmly told her that it was too slippery and unsafe so she would have to be patient. She then determined I was an extremely rude person, I asked what was worse, being rude (which I was not), or attacking people with their cars. She didn't have an answer.
Grr.
Bingo! So I make that entitled (MAMIL - middle-aged man in loafers?), ageist and sexist and possibly obstructing the disabled or people needing urgent medical treatment ("a woman in her 70s"). You clearly didn't think that confronting her like that might have caused her fear - she couldn't escape (given her deficient car-handling skills). And causing pollution ("The car revved").
For your own sake I hope you were making a purposeful journey and not just out for recreation like some London-marathon wannabe. Better have been wearing a hat and hi-vis too.
Previous convictions for "Wounding, Assault ABH ..." how was he licenced as a taxi driver in the 1st place ?
Because all you need to be a taxi driver is a driving licence and £20.
well unless the Welsh do something different, in theory the licensing authority should run a CRB/DBS check, I guess its up to them whether they then proceed to license a, or maintain the license of a, taxi driver with those kinds of convictions on their record.
but on the face of it, it should have rung alarm bells for them and Im sure the guidance would have recommended rejecting outright unless there was more information which explained it.
He's proven he doesn't have the temperament to be a professional driver.
Suspended sentence!, so just a wrap on the knuckles. When will sentences actually be seen as deterrents?
"Defence barrister Kevin Seal told Cardiff Crown Court that his client, who has previous convictions for wounding, assault occasioning actual bodily harm and failure to surrender, acted “out of character”.
Seal said the incident was a “moment of madness” and that injuring the cyclist was the “last thing Mr Godfrey wished”. The barrister also noted that, due to the collision, the motorist had lost his job as a taxi driver, which he described as a the “mainstay” of his life."
I wonder how many other of his moments of madness have occurred that were not brought before any courts?
A deserved ban.
An all too common suspended sentence for violent actions against more vulnerable road users, however, does not cut the mustard.
...and the usual troll comment from Martin73...I'm guessing because he's never had any cause to have a raised temper at someone that is deliberately trying to maim/kill/injure him...
Acted out of character? With previous like that?? The judge should have pulled counsel up right there.
IANAL but I believe that's not allowed, is it? Previous is allowed to be brought in for sentencing but can't be introduced before the verdict, you can only be on trial for the offence charged? I don't think the judge is allowed to interrupt counsel and say actually it's well in character. I can certainly recall rape cases where the jurors have been distraught to find that the person they acquitted had a string of previous offences of the same nature to their name that couldn't be disclosed.
Happy to stand corrected if wrong.
I think that making such a claim could risk allowing the prosecution to introduce a rebuttal. In a trial I was at, someone made a similar claim, the barristers shuffled up to the judge for a conflab and low and behold a prior record of behaviour was introduced.
The barrister is not supposed to make claims on behalf of the defendant they know to be untrue, and as the victim I'd be tempted to complain to the Law Society about that - although the reality is that the judge knows the record of the defendant and would recognise it as worthless drivel.
And still only gave a suspended sentence as if it was a first time offence.
It was a sentencing hearing following a guilty plea, the previous convictions would have been in the pre-sentence report, the "out of character" reference would have been made in mitigation to try and reduce the sentence in some way, but reading between the lines it appears the judge rejected it.
Thanks for the explanation, makes sense now.
The law (while they are at it making changes to punish dangerous cyclists) needs to be changed to stop incidents like this being treated as motoring offences.
This is a dangerous man who committed a potentially life-threatening assault on a person, using a car as a weapon, and got off free to all intents and purposes.
"pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm and dangerous driving"
he was procecuted for assualt not a driving offence.
Perhaps, but the light sentence made it look like he was sentenced for a driving offence, not an assault, especially given his record.
PS, not a lawyer and not sat in front of sentencing guidelines. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I'd have thought assault with a deadly weapon on top of previous assault with ABH and wounding would occasion some actual jail time. Also... 'professional driver'... but hey-ho!
With form like that, WTF was he doing in possession of a taxi licence?
Seems to me that he acted entirely IN character...
No, no, no, no, no. Entirely out of character; he used a car this time.
I wonder what sentences he got for wounding and assault when he didn't use a car.
Using one's fists, a knife, bat, crowbar, hammer... big trouble.
Using a car... meh.