£3,000 fine for Milkman who hit cyclist left him for dead and carried on delivering to customers

A milkman who was convicted of careless driving after he ran down a cyclist with his float on the wrong side of the road has been fined £3,000 and given a 70 day suspended sentence plus 70 hours unpaid work for a conviction of careless driving. He was also handed 10 penalty points for failing to report an accident. 

After hitting the cyclist, David Reid, 71 told a companion he thought the ‘dangerous’ cyclist, Royal Navy submariner Paul Reynolds, 36, was dead before continuing to serve customers on his round.

Reid left Mr Reynolds lying in the road in Barrow in Furness, getting back in his cab and telling a passenger “I think he’s dead.”

He went on to deliver milk to four more houses before going to raise the alarm at a post office - and then making 15 more deliveries before he returned to the scene.

A jury at Burnley Crown Court found him not guilty of dangerous driving at a previous hearing.

Mr Reynolds, 36, remained in a coma for six months after the collision and is now permanently disabled in a nursing home with round the clock care. He suffered serious head injuries and multiple fractures to his pelvis.

The court heard that Reid, a milkman for 50 years, was driving at 8mph on the wrong side of the road on February 27 last year, when he crashed head on into Mr Reynolds, causing the submariner to smash into the windscreen.

The Daily Mail reported that Reid’s 15-year-old schoolboy passenger told an earlier trial: “Dave got out to see if he was alright, he said hello to him and he came back and said to me 'I think he's dead'.

“He kept saying 'What do I do?' and then he went 'Cyclists, they are dangerous on the road - they do not pay attention.'"

Mr Reynold's parents John and Margaret whose younger son Carl died in 1994 from leukaemia said they had to travel 120 miles a day to sit with their son at his bedside for five hours each day.

His mother described herself as 'heartbroken and his father 'a broken man'.

Reid told the court: “I said to him 'can you hear me?' a few times. There was no response. He was just lying there. I didn't dare touch him.”

After going to the post office and asking someone to ring the emergency services he said he was in a ‘confused' state of mind and made fifteen more milk deliveries.

He said: “It isn't in my nature at all to be callous. I was driving as I normally drive and that is careful.”

The judge said: “The fine - that is the only sentence I can impose - is not and could not be a measured of the valuation of the harm done and grief caused on that February morning.”