Driver tried "to scare the living daylights" out of cyclists, court told

A man who allegedly drove his car straight at cyclists “to scare the living daylights” out of them has been accused of “lying through his teeth” after claiming claimed that his brother was driving in two of the three incidents concerned.

Dean Goble is on trial at Swindon Crown Court on three counts of dangerous driving, pleading not guilty to each of them, reports the Western Daily Press.

Goble, aged 40 and from Siddington near Cirencester, admitted that he was at the wheel of his Peugeot 206 in an incident involving cyclist David Jones in Ashton Keynes, Wiltshire, in April 2014.

Mr Jones had filmed the incident on his helmet camera and when he was shown the footage by the police, Goble agreed that it was his vehicle and that he was the driver involved.

But he blamed potholes for his having to swerve and insisted he had been in "full control of the car."

"I do not agree it was dangerous, slightly careless,” he told the jury.

"I can remember swerving towards a cyclist to miss the pothole. I have got no reason ... I am a cyclist myself."

Prosecutor Michael Butt told him: “Mr Goble, you are lying through your teeth. You have invented this about potholes because there is no reason for you to swerve into the path of Mr Jones."

The accused denied being involved in similar incidents the following month involving cyclists Jeremy Maiden and Amanda Adams, claiming that his brother, to whom he had lent his car, had been driving.

He did not tell police that his brother, who had been “in bother” before, had been driving on those occasions since he did not want to get him into further trouble.

"He admitted it to me yesterday," Goble told the court. "But my brother has been in bother and I spoke to him on the phone yesterday and I said I could get two or three years and he said it's not fair and he said 'Tell them it was me'.

"I just didn't want to get my brother into bother. It's not a lie."

Mr Butt said the claim his brother had been driving on two of the three occasions was: " a lie invented yesterday or even last night as an act of desperation to try and weasel your way out of the allegations."

Opening the case for the prosecution on Monday, Mr Butt had told the jury: "Each of these cyclists will tell you how they were cycling along a road minding their own business when they were approached head-on by a dark coloured Peugeot 206.

"Each of them will tell you how, as the car approached them on the opposite side of the road and when the driver saw the cyclist, the car swerved over the central line of the road making straight for the cyclist.

"It will be plain from the evidence you will hear from these three cyclists that this was a deliberate act by a driver who either wished to scare the living daylights out of the cyclist or perhaps, even worse, run them off the road,” he added.

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