A delivery van driver who was reading paperwork and failing to concentrate on the road when he struck and killed a father of two cycling to work has been jailed for six years.
Philip Scott, who had nine previous road traffic convictions and denied causing the death of 32-year-old Euan Thomson by dangerous driving, was also banned from driving for 11 years at the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday.
Thomson, a father of two young sons, was cycling to work on the A760 road between Largs and Kilbirnie in North Ayrshire at around 6.35am on Wednesday 10 August 2022 when he was struck by Scott.
The cyclist, a keen rugby player who played for his local Ardrossan Accies club, suffered serious injuries in the collision and died at the scene.
Following a police investigation, 40-year-old delivery driver Scott was found to have failed to maintain proper observations leading up to the crash and had been distracted by looking at and reading paperwork, the Ardrossan Herald reports.
His view of the road ahead was also obscured and he failed to notice Mr Thomson cycling on the road.
Scott was charged with causing Thomson’s death by dangerous driving, which he denied, offering instead to plead guilty to a lesser charge involving careless driving.
However, at Kilmarnock’s High Court earlier this year he was found guilty of causing death by dangerous driving, with the jury concluding that the motorist was not watching the road ahead as he was distracted by the paperwork in his van.
Prosecutor Graeme Jessop KC told the court that the paperwork for Scott’s deliveries that day was in his van and “he read them as he drove”.
The advocate depute argued that was the reason the 40-year-old failed to react to the cyclist’s presence on the road, telling the court that driving in that manner was “obviously dangerous”.
A witness also told police that he thought the van driver was paying attention to a bit of paper and not the road shortly before the collision.
Defence solicitor advocate Ross Yuill told the court that Scott accepted and understood the “inevitability” of a jail sentence following his conviction, noting that the driver “provided as much assistance as he could” and did not leave the scene after hitting Mr Thomson.
Speaking in Edinburgh’s High Court today, Judge Lady Hood said that, given the nature and seriousness of the charge, the only appropriate punishment was a custodial sentence.
She also pointed out that Scott has 14 previous convictions to his name, nine of which involved road traffic offences, including the use of a mobile phone at the wheel.
The judge said it was “very concerning” that Scott sought to minimise his record for road traffic offending, telling the motorist that he failed to see the escalating seriousness of the offences, while also noting that the “use of illicit substances has been a constant feature of your adult life”.
Lady Hood told Scott that it was “heartbreaking” to read the impact statement provided by Mr Thomson’s family, informing the driver that the fatal collision represented “the morning their world fell apart”.
Scott was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from driving for 11 years. He will be forced to pass an extended driving test before he is granted a licence again.
28 thoughts on “Distracted delivery driver who hit and killed cyclist while reading paperwork jailed for six years”
Wow! Whilst no sentence would
Wow! Whilst no sentence would be enough, relatively its a decent sentence for our courts!
While it it relatively decent
While it it relatively decent, it is still a pathetic outcome.
It’s not though, it just
It’s not though, it just seems it compared to the amount of lenient sentences passed. It’s shameful. If people were being KSI with any other consumer product in the numbers vehicles do there would be, quite rightly, an outpouring of anger.
Another one where the
Another one where the employer needs to take some responsibility; why did the driver have paperwork to read whilst driving?
Employers need to be proactive in ensuring their drivers are operating work vehicles safely. H&SE needs to be involved too IMO.
A good length driving ban – hopefully begins upon release. The sentencing would be under the old rules, 14 years maximum rather than life. Getting 6 years is a decent sentence compared to some, but still some way off that theoretical maximum of 14 years, particularly with the appalling history of previous driving convictions.
Cut down in his prime and leaving a family behind. Awful. 😔
Indeed – I don’t know the
Indeed – I don’t know the times and details and as Secret_squirrel alludes to *perhaps* some were spent. But it is quite possibly yet another employer at best showing zero curiosity about someone’s driving record for a job involving driving. And perhaps happy to give a serial unsafe and illegal driver a 2nd, 3rd, 4th… chance…
It’s surely possible in this
It’s surely possible in this day and age to have a delivery app attached to the satnav or the driver’s work phone that would automatically put the deliveries in the most efficient order, tell the driver with audio instructions where they were going next and if necessary provide a route? Whilst making no excuses whatsoever for the driver, if it was necessary for him to check paperwork as he drove along to do his job then I entirely agree, the employer is partly to blame.
RIP Euan.
As I said in another post it
As I said in another post it is possible that he was self-employed and there was no employer to take responsibility.
However, I do acknowledge that drivers are put under pressure for delivery times when they are employed.
I’d like to know how many of
I’d like to know how many of those driving offences were still active.
Driving is still the light touch way to kill someone.
My car is apparently
My car is apparently constantly scanning my eyes for signs of tiredness and knows when my hands are on the steering wheel and how firmly i’m holding it.
Apparently if i show signs of drowsiness it will flash up a coffee cup and emit an alarm telling me to take a break i’ve never seen it.
If my eyes close or i slump below a certain level and my grip on the steering wheel loosens it will apparently emit an alarm and perform a series of brake jolts to attempt to rouse me and if this fails it will activate the hazard lights find a safe space to pull over and make an emergency call with my location.
It all sounds very impressive and i’ve no idea if it works or not.
So obviously the car manufacturer will be collecting data from my car as i drive about my eye movements etc for research.
Obviously not every car has this feature although mine is 5 years old so possibly more than i think.
Firstly i think all car manufacturers should be obliged to release this data from these sort of systems in the event of a collision but other than that how hard would it be to tailor these kind of things to give a kind of alertness report after every journey? If this guy is spending every day glancing elsewhere (once is enough i know) and is a delivery driver and between 2 points displays any lack of attention or speeding between these points keep the back doors locked for 2 minutes after stopping in the first instance then 10 minutes if they do it again then an hour etc.I know it sounds almost like training Pavlovs dog but i’m sure they’d soon learn good behaviour.
Does it stop/ warn you going
Does it stop/ warn you going through red lights? Or transgressing unbroken white lines? Or speed limits?
I presume your question is
I presume your question is aimed at whether all this clever tech is only for the drivers protection not others?
The answer is it does have such things and i’m not going to list them all but if you were cycling along a lane in front of me you’d effectively be towing me at a set distance,if i try to accelerate past this distance it will apply the brakes to push me back only when i indicate to overtake will it let me accelerate and again if i’m too close the left mirror will flash and reduce the acceleration until i’m further out if i get too close or you move out in front of me it will brake hard and BRAKE! will appear across the windscreen.
The only problem with this system is it only takes one click on the steering wheel to disable it
Thats one example and BTW i’m really not into cars the above post was about data collection and my. car is nothing fancy just a small hatchback.That i only drive when needed as there are some journeys from this village with zero public transport options like taking the dog to the vets.
I hired a van last weekend to
I hired a van last weekend to move my lad in to his new uni accommodation. It had a similar system which got very annoying very quickly as it went off about 20% of the times I checked the lefthand mirror before changing lanes / turning left. I presume it mistook glancing left to look in the mirror as not concentrating on the road ahead.
I love the idea but it is worse than useless if it keeps giving false alarms. By the time I had been driving for a couple of hours and might conceivably have needed a break*, I had experienced at least a dozen false activations and would have been unlikely to have taken another alarm seriously.
* I stopped for lunch and a stroll after 2 hours anyway so hopefully was still fully alert.
In a hire van it might be
In a hire van it might be someone wiping the sensor with a dirty rag or something,
They will release this data
They will release this data to the appropriate authorities if required. I had to sign a document to acknowledge this when I collected a new car a few years ago.
Parameters recorded include ‘the vehicle’s speed, braking, position and tilt of the vehicle on the road, the state and rate of activation of all its safety systems, 112-based eCall in-vehicle system, brake activation and relevant input parameters of the on-board active safety and accident avoidance systems.”
So I would certainly expect a car that has senses driver drowsiness to drop a flag in the recording. Likewise if the driver has disabled active safety systems (frustratingly I think many drivers disable the whole suite of safety features in an attempt to shut off lane assistance on country roads).
Fursty Ferret wrote:
Unless they think it might reflect badly on their technology, in which case they’ll do their damndest to avoid disclosing anything and lie about what they even have.
So this bloke has NINE
So this bloke has NINE previous road traffic convictions. But some un-named company thinks it’s a good idea to employ him as a delivery van driver. Does this make sense to anybody???
It may be that he was a self
It may be that he was a self-employed van owner/driver, but the that begs the question who would insure him or at what cost!?
Reading delivery notes while
Reading delivery notes while driving isn’t a distraction it’s a choice
This won’t have been the
This won’t have been the first time a driver has killed or seriously injured someone whilst reading.
Yet the Met police chose not to action this:
Yet the Met police chose not
Yet the Met police chose not to action this
The surprising thing is that there’s any surprise about the police ignoring well-documented offences by drivers, particularly when they’re offences against cyclists
I will never understand how
I will never understand how careless driving is not the same as dangerous. Being careless in a car is so dangerous. Someone with 9 previous driving related convictions should also be nowhere near a vehicle that can harm anyone else.
Another “accident” that was anything but. It was very clear that this person is a danger on our roads but hey, why should peoples right not to be killed by these selfish pricks supercede their right to drive.
He was convicted of dangerous
He was convicted of dangerous driving; he tried to get away with a careless plea but the court wasn’t having it. On a general note I do entirely agree, how you can kill somebody through your negligence or incompetence and then be told it was just careless, not dangerous, defies belief. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more obvious definition of dangerous behaviour than “behaviour that directly caused the death of another human being”.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Well you could simply see it as the courts saying that the *standard* (supposedly “… of a careful, competent driver” IIRC) should simply be “of the average driver” (else it’s unfair!). And thus that driving that occasionally kills people is *not* “far below the standard…” – it is not*that* far from normal (statistically).
That’s not to say that they might not wish it better but they are “dealing with the world as they find” according to the standards and processes of the law.
It would seem that without further push from up above (law*makers*) that this is legally logical – although it often appears nuts to me…
chrisonabike wrote:
I suspect a lot of this stems from past practice of describing collisions and crashes as accidents. Even a careful and competent driver cannot avoid an accident. Now we are describing incidents correctly may be the law will catch up and realise that most collisions and crashes can be avoided by careful and competent drivers and some logic will appear in the courts decisions just as the forces did with accidental discharge many years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintentional_discharge
Bungle_52 wrote:
I hope that happens but a) where is the language correct (in rather few places i suspect)? and b) this sounds like magical thinking – the courts do as they do, with pushes from lawmakers and sometimes social norms. But mass motoring is still a goal/assumption and motornormativity is where we are…
Gary Hart does not believe
Gary Hart does not believe what he did was dangerous. He killed 10.
Nine previous and an 11 year
Nine previous and an 11 year ban? He doesn’t deserve to drive and I don’t see how an extensive driving test would ensure that he’d drive safely.
14 previous convictions!?
14 previous convictions!? Imagine how many times he WASN’T caught. He should have been given 2 years for every previous conviction, served as a single term – 28 years plus the 6.