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Taxi driver who killed cyclist and blamed fatal crash on being "blinded by sun" gets six-month suspended sentence

Despite admitting being unable to see clearly "the defendant made the decision to turn right when it was unsafe to do so", hitting and killing a "highly respected" headteacher cycling to work at a local school...

A taxi driver has avoided jail and was instead given a six-month sentence suspended for 12 months and a one-year driving ban for hitting and killing a cyclist in Bradford, an incident that saw the professional driver make an "unsafe" right turn across a junction while "blinded by the sun".

Fiaz Hussain admitted causing the death of Jeremy Richardson by careless driving over the incident on Barkerend Road, at the junction with Gilpin Street, in the West Yorkshire city in June 2022. 

Mr Richardson, 61, a "highly respected" headteacher and experienced cyclist, was cycling to work at Beckfoot Thornton school and was travelling downhill on the route at around 6.30am when Hussain was driving in the opposite direction. A reporter from Yorkshire Live was in court to hear how the 60-year-old taxi driver claimed he was "blinded by the sun", the prosecutor noting that he made the right turn across the cyclist's path "when it was unsafe to do so", hitting him and causing injuries which he later died from in hospital.

Hussain stopped at the scene and was initially charged with causing death by dangerous driving, but the prosecution accepted his guilty plea to the lesser causing death by careless driving charge in August. 

Prosecuting, James Lake argued the safest option for Hussain would have been to have stopped or proceed with extreme caution due to the low sun, but instead he made the right turn across Mr Richardson's path.

The court heard that Hussain had worked as a taxi driver since 1990 and had a clean driving licence. He has been banned from driving for a year and will be required to undertake 80 hours of unpaid work and attend 10 rehabilitation activity days.

The judge, Jonathan Gibson, noted Hussain had shown remorse and concluded Mr Richardson was a "highly respected headteacher in this city who over the course of his career had helped and supported so many pupils and staff".

"He is, and remains, sorely missed and it is certain that no sentence the court can impose would be able to compensate for his life at all," the judge said, handing down a six-month suspended sentence for Hussain.

The court also heard from Mr Richardson's wife Amanda who said her husband was "a talented and thoughtful teacher who always brought out the best in others". She added that she had received hundreds of messages from teachers and pupils who had remembered him fondly.

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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14 comments

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macbaby | 45 min ago
2 likes

Sunrise in Bradford during June 2022 was between 4.39 and 4.42 am. Did police/prosecution look at the angle of the sun before accepting the excuse? Very convenient but challengeable defence if anyone could be bothered

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chrisonabike | 1 hour ago
1 like

Wonder if the defence was "one slip in a lifetime of safe driving" and "they're very sorry" or whether they made use of the Incompetence Paradox?

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peted76 | 1 hour ago
3 likes

A one year driving ban... one year... what the actual hell. 

Fcuk you justice system, that is not justice in any form.

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Boopop | 1 hour ago
4 likes

Looking forward to the weeks of media outrage and years of regular calls to regulate "dangerous taxi drivers" by right wing politicians.

Oh, who am I kidding?

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the little onion | 1 hour ago
0 likes

If you can't do your job without killing someone through gross incompetence, you shouldn't do that job. I hope this person never works as a taxi driver again.

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brooksby | 1 hour ago
1 like

Whether or not the oncoming traffic was a cyclist on a bicycle, if he really was "Blinded by the sun" (TM) then I'm not convinced that he should have been attempting a right turn.

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lesterama | 2 hours ago
1 like

I can't stand the way the law works with incidents like these.

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Rendel Harris | 2 hours ago
8 likes

Quote:

"...it is certain that no sentence the court can impose would be able to compensate for his life at all," the judge said

Again this? Any judge who makes this type of fatuous statement when sentencing should be summarily dismissed as not having any understanding of the purpose or mechanism of the law. Sentencing is supposed to impose condign punishment for the severity of the offence and to provide a deterrent for others. Of course there is no level of sentence available that could compensate for the taking of another person's life, in what way is that an excuse for the imposing of risibly lenient sentences for doing so?

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Cugel replied to Rendel Harris | 1 hour ago
0 likes

Rendel Harris wrote:

Quote:

"...it is certain that no sentence the court can impose would be able to compensate for his life at all," the judge said

Of course there is no level of sentence available that could compensate for the taking of another person's life, in what way is that an excuse for the imposing of risibly lenient sentences for doing so?

There's a logical conundrum in both what the judge said/did and in your response. Your remarks beg the question: what "level of sentence" could, then, compensate in this and similar cases if, as you both seem to imply, none of the current sentences are of any utility?

As we know, gaol does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do, producing inmates even more disaffected and uncivilised than when they went in, often re-offending to a worse degree when released - and costing taxpayers a huge amount of money both during gaol time and after release. The "best" you can say for such puinishments is that they offer revenge, a thing of no real utility to anyone at all, not even victims and their families, in truth.

"Compensate" is perhaps the central concept worth exploring. Compensation may never be enough but it could at least be used as the nexus of punishments to reduce as many consequential harms of such events as is practical; and perhaps obtain some benefits.

A sentence of years devoting all the perpetrator's time and effort to financial recompense to a victim or their family, perhaps? That time and effort made via work within a milieau wherein the criminal gains a sense of empathy/sympathy for others along with a reattachment and sense of belonging to / affection for a community and the society containing it.

Revenge of the hang-'em-high kind is a natural human response but one that's worthless in changing behaviours or reducing grief.

But perhaps you have no confidence in the notion of redemption?

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the little onion replied to Cugel | 1 hour ago
2 likes

I agree on the ineffectiveness of prison in many instances with regards recindivism. But a one year revocation of a driving license is an insult. Kill someone through gross and reckless incompetence should mean you can't drive for a long, long time. And never as a form of employment.

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chrisonabike replied to the little onion | 52 min ago
1 like

More to the point - how will we know they're not driving (detection rates are - like most road policing - very, very low)?

If they do drive before their ban has finished, are they actually recalled to prison to serve their (*checks notes*) 6 month sentence (if we even bother with such short ones currently...)?  Or are they solemnly told "you will not do this again, or we will be forced to tell you not to do it again, again"?

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Rendel Harris replied to Cugel | 32 min ago
1 like

You don't half make some assumptions about what other people have said sometimes. I didn't say that I wanted the driver to go to prison, however the judge could have sent a signal by imposing a longer suspended sentence, making the suspended sentence period longer, imposing a longer period of unpaid work and a much longer driving ban. That's not actually calling for "revenge of the hang-em-high kind", it's calling for killing people with motorcars to be treated as a serious offence rather than something, at this sentencing level, roughly equivalent to a shoplifting spree.

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Hirsute replied to Cugel | 16 min ago
0 likes

Not sure how all of that follows.

As has been said many, many times on here, if you want to kill someone then do it with a car. Traffic offences involving a KSI are treated much lighter than other offences because there is an acceptance of a level of collaterlal damage that doesn't occur in other walks of life.

I don't see a stiff sentence and proper ban as revenge, but as a deterent and an demonstration that driving needs to be taken seriously and involves a high level of concentration.

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brooksby replied to Rendel Harris | 6 min ago
0 likes

Quote:

"...it is certain that no sentence the court can impose would be able to compensate for his life at all," the judge said

And yet the court also doesn't seem to even want to try surprise

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