Statue of Justice, Old Bailey (licensed CC BY 2.0 on Flickr by Ronnie Macdonald).jpg
A driver who hit a cyclist and fled, leaving him dying in the road, has walked free from court with a community service order.
Michael O'Shea, 28, hit Brian Tozer, 46 in Andover, Hampshire, on 6 March.
He admitted failing to stop at the scene but said he didn’t see the cyclist "until he was literally right in front of me".
A coroner ruled that the collision could not be called an accident, but the Crown Prosecution Service said: "The forensic collision team concluded that Mr O'Shea was not at fault for the accident and there was no evidence of bad or poor driving.”
The inquest in Winchester heard that O'Shea said he approached the Folly roundabout slowly but did not see Mr Tozer, according to the BBC.
He said: "He came off the bike and maybe the left side of his body hit my bonnet then he fell to the floor.”
O’Shea drove away and Mr Tozer later died in hospital. O’Shea was arrested later that day.
At Basingstoke Magistrates' Court, he admitted failing to stop, was given a five-month suspended sentence and ordered to do 250 hours of unpaid work.
Coroner Grahame Short said: ”I conclude that Brian Tozer died as a result of a road traffic collision. I am not calling this an accident, it was a collision."
After an unpromising start, having to be bribed by her parents to learn to ride without stabilisers, Sarah became rather keener on cycling in her university years, and was eventually persuaded to upgrade to proper road cycling by the prospect of a shiny red Italian bike, which she promptly destroyed by trapping a pair of knickers in the rear derailleur. Sarah writes about about cycling every weekend on road.cc.