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news
Driver knocks cyclists from bikes near Yeovil (video still via Martin Hills).JPGVideo: Shocking footage of driver ploughing into group of Somerset cyclists
A Somerset cyclist has released shocking video footage of the moment a motorist ploughed into the group he was riding with, leaving one of them – his wife – unconscious.
The driver, 81-year-old Michael Tarrant, received a two-year driving ban at Taunton Crown Court last week after pleading guilty to dangerous driving at Taunton Crown Court.
Prosecutors decided not to proceed with a separate charge of causing serious injury by dangerous driving following his guilty plea to the less serious charge, reports Somerset Live.
Tarrant, from Wincanton, will have to take an extended retest to get his licence back once his ban expires.
He was given a conditional discharge and ordered to pay a £20 victim surcharge.
The footage was shot in Mudford, near Yeovil, on 23 November 2017 by Martin Wills who was on a group ride with fellow members of Yeovil Cycling Club, reports Somerset Live.
Shot from both front- and rear-facing cameras, it shows Tarrant knocking several cyclists from their bikes as he passed them at speed.
Mr Wills said: “The first shows my wife Sandra being hit. The second video shows one of the group being knocked off and crashing into me.”
In an interview with Somerset Live shortly after the incident in November 2017, Mr Wills gave a fuller account of how it unfolded.
“The first I knew was a heavy blow to my right buttock,” he explained.
"This sent me off balance and I fell heavily with my bike landing on top of me.
“Propping myself up, I found I was looking north along the road we had come down.
“One of the riders was lying in the road a few feet away with her wrecked bike next to her.
"Another rider, who had miraculously escaped injury, was putting my wife, who was unconscious, into the recovery position,” he continued.
“Several cars had stopped and three of the occupants were first aiders, who immediately joined us attending the three prone ladies.
“As I was speaking to my wife she regained consciousness but had no recollection of what had happened or where she was.
“Two people were attending to another of the riders so I had a look at one of the other riders, who was in shock and shivering violently.
“Her bike lay behind her completely wrecked. A lady from a following car covered her with a coat and stayed monitoring her.
“I returned to my wife and within 15 minutes the ambulances and paramedics arrived.”
Four of the cyclists required hospital treatment and Mr Wills added: “Apart from being knocked unconscious, my wife sustained a broken finger, cracked ribs, a bump on the back of her head and various bruises. I had cuts and bruises.
> Four cyclists in hospital after driver hits group ride from behind
“The emergency services did a brilliant job. The paramedics, ambulance and first aiders were all brilliant. Yeovil Hospital also treated us quickly, efficiently and with compassion during this stressful incident."
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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62 comments
So it's not the opticians duty to report them? Ridiculous!
So it's not the opticians duty to report them? Ridiculous!
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Patient confidentiality etc. The optician could probably be prosecuted if they did report them.
Which is, when you think about it, in this particular circumstance, ludicrous. The system depends on the person who's going to lose their licence to do the decent thing and hand themselves in...
Short of commiserating with the driver about his rotten luck in coming across the cyclists when he did, the judge really could not have done more to stick 2 fingers up at the victims of this shocking act of hit and run. Probably in the same Masonic lodge or golf club, or know each other from the incontinence clinic.
Also I hate this plea bargaining game. Plead guilty to dangerous driving when you have clearly and definitively caused serious injury by dangerous driving and get a reward by way of far lesser punishment for letting their Lordships and Justices out a bit earlier for their luncheon?
The message here is that you can drive into old age until you get into a situation where you really hurt someone, because there will be no effective punishment for making that choice when you really shouldn't be in charge of a motor vehicle any more.
Judge.jpg
I'm sorry but what the actual fucking fuck!!! Justice for the car driver as is the norm.
Nowhere does it state why the driver ploughed into them, and with his age, its usually bad eyesight or some other condition from old age that makes them unsuitable to retain their driving licence.
I've said on previous occasions that its a joke you have to renew your passport every 10 years but once you have a driving licence, you have it for life.
It should be compulsory re-testing every 10 years, reducing to every 5 once the driver reaches 60 or 65. Add onto that compulsory eye-testing.
How did they also not do leaving the scene of the accident too ? The car disappears off round the corner,and nothing in the witness reports suggests the driver returned immediately,how can you claim you didn't notice that happening.
Our local paper did report that:
The incident, which took place at around 1pm, resulted in a police chase and arrest, a source has said.
That's outrageous. Knowingly leaving the scene should always result in prison time.
low winter sun m'lud
Seriously though, having driven an MX-5 if you haven't got shades or a cap on it is very, very easy to be blinded by the sun - the visors aren't fit for purpose, particularly if you're an average height bloke.
Not excusing the driver at all but I remember the original report and expecting them to play that card based on the orientation of the road and time of day.
Fucking horrible to watch though, I'm amazed they got away (relatively) unscathed. The whip on her neck is truly horrific.
So remove them from the road, like Fixie's with no brakes, wanton and furious driving.
I think the driver definitely saw them, this was a lazy, dgaf, close pass gone wrong!
Most people I suspect rarely clean the *rear* of their windscreen - that makes a huge difference.
I keep having a go at my OH but she never does it AFAIA ("I don't drive in low sun") so I wind up cleaning the sodding thing myself and having a f***ing good whinge at her.
This is exactly the kind of case the government's review of cycling safety should be looking at. If such clearly dangerous driving, which caused injuries and could have caused fatalities, is treated so lightly, our justice system is clearly failing to protect the vulnerable, which I thought was its primary purpose. It needs to be much easier for blatantly dangerous driving to be charged and found guilty in court, instead of which it is extremely difficult with any number of loopholes for clever lawyers to use to exonerate the driver.
I'm sure the review will find for this type of change in the law and not just recommend hi-viz and helmets. Ho, ho, ho.
2 year ban - was that 6 months for each one knocked off ?
Since he is 81 and I guess too old for jail, so why not a ban for life ?
I can't understand how a court can accept a plea of "guilty" for dangerous driving and "non-guilty" to causing injury by dangerous driving for the same accident leaving 4 people in hospital and 4 bikes in pieces.
Add inn the apparent failure to stop as there are no indications of braking. leaving the scene of an accident.
Ban should have been a lifetime one, even though he'll clearly never pass the extended test at 83.
How on earth the CPS decided to go for the lesser charge I do not know, someone need to take a long hard look at themselves.
It'll only change when its someone then know and love that is killing or injured
How did they also not do leaving the scene of the accident too ? The car disappears off round the corner,and nothing in the witness reports suggests the driver returned immediately,how can you claim you didn't notice that happening.
So little!
What? Is that a joke?
For which he was given a conditional discharge... So nothing!
4£ per cyclist. That is our value in Pounds these days. Not a tenner, not a fiver, just 4£. Somewhere around a meal deal, a pint or 30 minutes at the minimal wage.
I think victim's surcharge goes into a separate pot -Revenue raised from the Victim Surcharge is used to fund victim services through the Victim and Witness General Fund.
Damages for injury and bikes would be an insurance matter, hopefully they will have a specialist who will take the old bloke to the cleaners on that front.
That's horrific! One can only hope the offending driver chooses to do the honourable thing and not apply for his license back when the ban runs out
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At least the garmin auto-paused and so maintained your average. Joking aside, glad everyone recovered and seriously, what exactly do you have to do to lose your privilege to drive in this country?
My wife drew a parallel with how Americans - generalisation - are about their gun rights. No matter the death toll, they are immovable.
A very interesting and valid on some grounds, comparison. Both guns and driving seen as inviolable rights, not responsibilities, and any challenge seen as a restriction on freedoms. The freedom may be to kill and maim at will, but most people just don't want to think about that. The question is, how do we change the perception that behaving dangerously is a right to be enjoyed by all citizens?
Clearly, the law relating to motoring and dangerous driving has to change, but more importantly is public perception. As any tobacco campaigner will tell you, it wasn't the damage that smoking did that brought in the law, it was public opposition to smoking, brought about by many, many years of campaigning. The first thing we should be concentrating on is getting rid of the cycle haters from the media, since they can have a disproportionate effect on how the public view cycling.
Isn't part of the problem also that successive governments have encouraged a situation where many people feel that they MUST have a personal car, even for something as simply as shopping. Look at how many specialist stores have been moved out of town, which is a direct consequence of tax perks granted by governments, and they're often not exactly accessible without private motorised transport. By design.
One of my pet hates is how you are not allowed to use the recycling centres (in Bristol at least) without a car:
Even though there's no official 'pedestrian access' the St.Phillips or Avonmouth tips on foot, i've seen plenty of people going into St.Phillips without a car over the years. Long old walk for most though...
I've seen people being turned away from there as well as they tried to get in pushing a bike with a basket of rubbish.
Although I grumble about Bristol most of the time, as that's where I work and spend most of my time, I actually live in what the Bristol Traffic blog refers to as the Elf Kingdom (North Somerset).
My nearest tip is Black Rock, off Valley Road in Portishead (here: https://goo.gl/maps/dVQTk2oitjF2 ). And that's marked up as no pedestrian access because there are no footpaths anywhere near it (haven't ever tried to cycle in there, as most of my recycling is huge bags of hedge cuttings, but to be frank that's a scary road even when driving a car...).
One of my pet hates is how you are not allowed to use the recycling centres (in Bristol at least) without a car:
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Indeed, it is a sign of just how car dependent our society has become when perfectly normal everyday activities can't be undertaken if you don't have a car.
I was knocked off in January, and an appointment was made for me to see a specialist doctor, which I can't attend because I don't have a car. The site isn't accessible by public transport and it's over an extremely busy motorway junction reached only by other very busy roads, so cycling isn't feasible either.
When you have to drive twenty miles to buy a loaf of bread or a pint of milk, will it all have been worth it?
Which sort of brings us back to my point, which was about elderly people who probably really really shouldn't be driving on the roads any more, but who have to (or feel they have to) because otherwise how the f- are they going to actually get to hospitals/shopping/friends/etc?
Which sort of brings us back to my point, which was about elderly people who probably really really shouldn't be driving on the roads any more, but who have to (or feel they have to) because otherwise how the f- are they going to actually get to hospitals/shopping/friends/etc?
[/quote]
One of the really great things that John Prescott did was to introduce bus passes for pensioners, so that the cost of public transport isn't a barrier. Old people are no different to anyone else; they've been told for their entire life that you're a success if you have a car and a failure if you use public transport, so prising them out of their cars isn't easy.
If only they had introduced more of the measures in Prescott's White Paper on transport, things would be radically different now.
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