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news
Five reasons to ride in the dark August 2018Taxi driver who killed cyclist avoids jail after lawyer's hi-vis and lights defence
A defence lawyer successfully kept his client, a taxi driver who hit and killed a cyclist in a midnight crash, out of jail after asking the judge to consider the cyclist's lack of reflective clothing and flashing lights.
At a sentencing hearing at Oxford Crown Court, Michael Goold argued Robert Mallinson had been "very difficult to see" when his client, Daniel O'Donnell, knocked him down at a Didcot crossroads in the early hours of 8 August 2020.
Go Green Taxis driver O'Donnell was driving from Didcot station to pick up a fare when he hit Mr Mallinson, whose bike had front and rear lights and reflectors.
At an earlier hearing, O'Donnell pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving, and was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years.
The Oxford Mail reports the court heard how O'Donnell's Toyota Prius slowed to 14mph as it approached the junction of Lydalls Road from Haydon Road, but appeared to speed up as he hit the cyclist riding the correct way down one-way Lydalls Road.
The professional driver stayed at the scene, with witnesses saying he was "shaking like a leaf".
Mr Mallinson, a "loving, caring man" was cycling home from seeing friends when he was struck, and was taken to hospital where, despite the efforts of intensive care doctors, he died two weeks later on August 23.
28-year-old O'Donnell said he had not seen the cyclist, something Judge Pringle said he should have done, especially considering his profession.
"As a taxi driver and someone familiar with that road you should have been concentrating hard to your right, looking out not just for headlights but for any other road users," the judge said.
However Judge Pringle opted to suspend the sentence, noting that O'Donnell had no prior convictions, would "seriously struggle" in prison, had strong mitigation and could likely be rehabilitated.
Defence lawyer Goold said his client was "deeply, deeply remorseful", and argued the cyclist's lack of reflective clothing had made him difficult to spot. O'Donnell was also banned from driving for two years and will have to pass an extended retest if he wishes to drive once the ban passes.
In a victim personal statement read to the court, Mr Mallinson’s wife Janet said: "He was a wonderful, loving, caring man. [O’Donnell] has taken away the love of my life, my soulmate, the man I wanted to grow old with."
Mr Mallinson's brother, John, said the death was "needless", and the defendant had showed a "complete disregard" for his sibling’s "physical vulnerability on a bicycle".
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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Well, yeah. I can imagine that linking your product in any way to the Cybertruck, the most ridiculed product in recent history, isn't a PR victory,...
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Thank goodness for that. I don't suppose anyone would want you to. You certainly behave like one though.
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I'm not the editor of this article, nor indeed of anything on this website. One would have thought that didn't require explaining.
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At a guess, the cps budget for the prosecution was low. Having a senior prosecutor friend, this often happens. So while they would love to do more, if no one will pay an expert witness they won't turn up.
There are lots of reasons to look to the left for traffic coming contra-flow from the left, including pedestrians (as of right), reversing vehicles (potentially careless) and other offending drivers (illegal). The duty on the emerging vehicle is to give way to traffic on the major road; it's not conditional on whether they should be coming that way or the driver expects them to be.
Indeed, and I think the truth lies in the statement "you should have been concentrating hard to your right, looking out not just for headlights".
I've often heard it said, driving at night is safer because you can see the headlights coming round a bend. There's an easy assumption that if there is no pool of light approaching then there is nothing coming, almost as if "you don't need to look".
My bet is the driver never even looked right.
Grim indeed.
If you do not see something as big as a person, with a bike overlayed, with lights on AND reflectors on that reflect headlights (which you must have on), then this clearly proves beyond reasonable doubt that you did not look. If you do not look you will also not see flashing lights or retroreflectives.
Kill someone through carelessness and get away with it because "it's only a cyclist" and it's somehow the cyclist's fault they got hit while doing nothing wrong.
A nonsense argument from the lawyer and one that the judge rejected apparently, so the click bait title and heading of this article is incorrect..
'A defence lawyer successfully kept his client, a taxi driver who hit and killed a cyclist in a midnight crash, out of jail after asking the judge to consider the cyclist's lack of reflective clothing and flashing lights.'
The taxi slowed down to 14mph which suggests to me suggests to me the driver made, at best, the merest of glances before pulling out of the junction. I've never been to Didcot so don't know what that particular road is like at night, but in general I do find that late at night drivers often get complacent and assume roads will be virtually empty.
I would also suggest hi-viz clothing would have made absolutely no difference - fluorescent colours don't work in the dark and reflective bits are only good if caught in the beam of headlights. At junctions like this, the cyclist won't be in the vehicle's headlights until it is far too late.
That said, I'm not generally in favour of an excess of incarceration and I'm not entirely convinced it would be helpful in this case. But I would very much like to see lifetime driving bans in order to reduce the risk to the public in future (which would be more palatable if we also made society less car dependent).
The taxi slowing to 14mph is just another way of saying he did not stop and could not have had enough time to check both ways. Reckless surely ?
it's a one way road, he only needed to check his left (where the cyclist was)
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6095983,-1.2449171,3a,88.1y,358.2h,97.74t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2cg9GaWaPqbfQF9Eo-mZYQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
It's careles or dangerous , they dint have a third category.
dangerous is a much tougher standard to prove, and is a stat alternative to careless hence most of the time they go for careless.
Yes, what galls me here is not so much the lack of prison. It is the acceptance of the arguments. Instead of "failed to stop" it's "slowed to 14mph". Instead of "failed to look" its the cyclist who didn't make himself visible.
Seriously?
I've said it before and I'll say it again - two moving obects on a converging course that remain on the same relative bearing to each other will collide. Put another way, if a driver only slows on their approach to a junction, but continues to move, they will hit the cyclist that is hidden behind the A pillar of the car.
I suggest the driver did not see the cylist becuase they did not look properly; neither better lighting nor reflective clothing would have helped because, the driver saw only the A pillar and not what was behind it.
Constant Bearing Decreasing Range
It's been well documented and umderstood for a very long time, but somehow drivers get away with it.
https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/11573764
Repeating myself as I bust the link in my earlier post but the classic from Bez has you covered: https://beyondthekerb.org.uk/collision-course/
That is a horrible crossroads. Far too many drivers go straight across it without stopping - as it sounds like this taxi driver did. Though of course this does not excuse his actions one little bit, nor does it make his sentence appropriate.
You've talked yourself into irrelevance there.
Don't mess with the "that's a horrible junction/ dangerous area" bit. It readily translates into "he/she (vulnerable party) shouldn't have been there" and then into yet another light/non-custodial sentence for a killer driver or other perp.
Sometimes. In practice of course you can have "extremely dangerous junction design" AND "driver should have looked" at the same time but yes currently this is often an excuse in the UK.
Does feel very much like the judge all but put a friendly arm around the offender, patted him warmly on the hand and said "there, there, you poor dear". Not even a slap on the wrist.
A sentence of ten months suspended for two years, running concurrently with the pitifully short driving ban. He'd get as much for being drunk and driving into a lampost. For pity's sake, a life was taken. Through negligence. There should be more recognition of this than a minor inconvience to the offender.
I'm not sure the headline is particularly appropriate here. While it's technically true, it's giving the misleading impression that the sentence was suspended because of the defence's line about hi vis and lights, whereas in fact the judge appears to have rejected that argument and it was due to unrelated factors.
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Yeah, but it wouldn't get as many clicks if they reported non-sensationally, neh?
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The legal requirement for bicycle lights, as I understand it, is that after dark a bicycle must show SOLID lights front and rear and that flashing lights alone are in fact illegal. They may be used in conjunction with solid lights. I note that the judge did not appear to accept these arguments in his comments.
The regs have permitted flashing lights (including flashing lights on their own) since 2005.
However, there's a wrinkle - if your flashing light also has a steady mode, and that steady mode doesn't satisfy the standard for a steady light, then running it as a flashing light doesn't satisfy the legal requirement, even if it meets the requirements for flashing lights. Go figure.
Thank you for clarifying.
Although, in a normal court of law, the breach pof the law would have to be demonstrated to have had a material impact on the incident.
In other words, would the availability of the steady mode have made a difference to the fact that it would have been a valid light without and would remain the driver's responsibility to take effective observations.
That is the test that should have been applied to the argument by either the prosecution if given the opportunity or by the judge coz... he's a judge.
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Yup, those for ken Tories, eh?
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2005, yeh?
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Oh, hang on.
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What are you dribbling on about?
Where would you like us to send your prize for 'Most Irrelevant Comment of the Month'?
Doubt there is any space left on the mantlepiece.
Bicycle lighting regs are a bit of a mess.
Last time I checked it was not possible to go into Halfords and buy a set of lights labelled as meeting the British Standard. The available lights may actually exceed the BS in some respects.
If only the defense lawyer new the cyclist's lights didn't meet the BS, he could have got his client off scot free!
This will be a bit of a worry for some car drivers. I have heard rumour that some of them are painted in dull colours like grey and their lights often do not flash.
And then wait til they find out even cars that are hi-vis with flashing lights still get hit by other cars
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