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Justice (Lonpicman, Wikimedia Commons)Drunk driver jailed for two years after injuring cyclist
A drunk driver from Hull has been jailed for two years after pleading guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving, reports Lucy Leeson of the Hull Daily Mail.
Suzanne Partridge, 32, left the scene after hitting 46-year-old Raich Carter, leaving him with injuries including a fractured skull, broken ribs and blindness in one eye.
Partridge was nearly three times over the limit when she hit Mr Carter on September 7 last year and failed to stop despite being aware she had hit the cyclist.
Hull Crown Court heard that Partridge was on her way home from Hull's Freedom Festival when she hit Mr Carter. She had drunk several pints of beer.
She had stopped for another drink and shortly afterwards witnesses reported seeing her car was seen swerving across Hull Road before the collision.
Prosecutor Philip Evans said: "The witness saw no operation of the defendant's brake lights before he heard the impact of the collision.
"He saw Mr Carter thrown into the air and land on his back in the road, before rolling over on to his left hand side.
"The defendant was institutionally aware that a collision had taken place."
Mr Carter, a supply teacher, was taken to hospital and has not been able to work since being hit.
He said: "I am trying to remain positive but this loss of sight is clearly a worry to me."
Investigators found fragments of glass from Partridge's vehicle on Mr Carter's clothing. When police confronted her at her home, she was stumbling and unsteady on her feet.
A breath test showed she had 101mcg of alcohol in 100ml of breath. The legal limit is 35mcg.
In mitigation, David Gordon said: "What should have been a happy day turned into a complete nightmare, not only for Mr Carter, but for this woman.
"The events of that day will haunt her for the rest of her life.
"It was a gross misjudgment of her to have alcohol and she is deeply remorseful for her actions.
"This behaviour is completely out of character for her in every way."
Partridge admitted causing serious injury through dangerous driving, drink-driving and failing to stop after an accident. She has since written a letter to Mr Carter expressing her sorrow about the crash.
Judge Mark Bury said: "This has been a tragedy for you, and it gives me no pleasure to pass this sentence but I have to consider the interests of the public and Mr Carter, whose life has been wrecked by this incident."
He also banned Partridge from driving for two years and 11 months.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
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19 comments
Another cyclist failed by the courts giving a fucking pathetic sentence for a seriously dangerous and drunk driver. She should have got a minimum of 10 years with NO reduction. She is only sorry as she got caught. What a bitch.
2 years for a hit and run whilst drunk does seam like a very low sentence. But hopefully the stigma will follow her for the rest of her life.
I don't understand why a driving ban isn't applied upon release from prison. Surely being banned whilst in prison is pointless?
'I have to consider the interests of the public and Mr Carter'
Not necessarily a slight on the part of the Judge, but placing the seriously injured victim after the public in this summation riles me some.
Assuming she was insured either through vehicle insurance or public liability on her house insurance and against which the victim will most surely have made a claim. Does the insurance company have any legal remedy to recover their financial losses from her; home, savings, pension, future earnings?
As far as I am concerned, even if she does get her driving licence back, she should never be in a financial position to be able to even afford another car given that she has destroyed another person's livelihood by her actions.
I hate to be all Daily Maily, but the thought of being left partly blinded for life, due to someone else's reckless selfish stupidity - and then that person only does a year in jail for it - is one I find quite distressing.
But I suppose the question is, would much longer sentences really deter this kind of behaviour? I don't know - but the US has longer sentences and still seems to have plenty of drunk-driving.
And while a driving ban for life would seem justified, as vonhelmet says its true that its very, very hard to enforce such bans. Maybe having long prison terms for anyone caught breaking a ban would help?
To me it always seems to come down to segregation and changing the physical nature of the roads as the only workable solution. The current situation just seems intolerably unjust, but I can't see how legal sanctions can really change it.
Save the stupid reckless drivers from their own brainlessness, by as far as humanly possible making it physically impossible for them to endanger others.
"Hull Crown Court heard that Partridge was on her way home from Hull's Freedom Festival when she hit Mr Carter. She had drunk several pints of beer.
She had stopped for another drink and shortly afterwards witnesses reported seeing her car was seen swerving across Hull Road before the collision."
@gavben - you missed out the decisions to stop the car, have another drink, then get back behind the wheel! (I had to read this bit of the report twice just to be sure I wasn't mistaken)
@benb - I think the law changed - bans now start after release from prison. Oh, and car insurance, assuming she has it, will be prohibitive as well.
You'd like to think so, but they never bothered enacting that law.
http://thecyclingsilk.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/when-is-law-not-law-when-no...
Let's all email our newly elected MP's and ask them to sign it. I just have.
Driving bans are borderline unenforceable, though. Unless you're caught doing something stupid, you can just keep driving. What are the police going to do, stake out your house in case you get in a car? Maybe driving while banned needs to be punishable by summary execution...
whilst I agree that the ban is virtually unenforceable, this doesn't mean that it shouldn't be stated clearly that bad driving is unacceptable.
If you take murderers, you will find that most did so because of a certain set of unrepeatable circumstances, doesn't mean that the legal system says oh well don't worry. Is a sentence about deterrence or about punishment or a bit of both?
It's absolutely about both, but a driving ban neither punishes nor deters, because it's so easily ignored, if a meaningful ban is even given in the first place. There needs to be some sort of way of following up on people to ensure they're not driving when they shouldn't be, but that probably requires either vast amounts of manpower or some sort of technical solution the like of which I can't readily conceive, and would no doubt be struck down as in violation of some rights or other anyway.
Bullshit!
She drove to the place where she knew she would consume alcohol so she knew she would be driving after drinking. That's premeditation, or in legal terms Mens Rea.
She should be permanently banned from driving.
2 years in jail is not enough, she left a man in the road having run him over.......what? Out in less than 2 years, justice?
5 year drivers ban would seem more apt, you lost that privilege because of your stupidity.
"This behaviour is completely out of character for her in every way."
Bullshit.
"This has been a tragedy for you [the driver]"
WTF?
Plus also, 2 years in prison, 2 years 11 months ban, so only 11 months effective ban.
I'd rather have no custodial sentence and a proper duration driving ban.
Yep. Whole-life bans should be mandatory for anyone who kills with a vehicle. Personally I see no point in putting this woman in prison. Who will benefit from this?
I really can't see how people are ever allowed to drive again after doing that sort of thing. Far from being devastating to her, she made a decision to carry out an action that has huge consequences for someone else.
Multiple decisions.
Decision to drive when drunk, then decision not to stop after accident.
The first is stupidity, though people always underestimate consequences.
The second is callous and evil: leaving a seriously injured person at the side of the road without helping them shows you are not fit to be trusted with anything, let alone with a vehicle.
Terrible story and there are no winners.