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news
Lightwood Road roundabout, Longton (Google Maps)“Reckless” taxi driver who left cyclist with life-changing brain injury avoids jail
A taxi driver has been sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for two years, following a collision which left a cyclist with a devastating and life-changing brain injury.
23-year-old Mohammed Israar pleaded guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court earlier this week, 16 months after cutting across and colliding with a cyclist on a roundabout on the Lightwood Road in Longton.
Israar, a taxi driver who was off duty at the time of the collision, was also banned from driving for three years and must complete a rehabilitation activity for 15 days along with 150 hours of unpaid work, Stoke-on-Trent Live reports.
On 16 July 2021 Israar entered the roundabout on the Lightwood Road in the right-hand lane, despite intending to turn left.
“The cyclist was in the correct left-hand lane and intended to go straight on,” prosecutor Jonathan Dickinson told the court.
“However, the defendant cut across him to turn left and the back of his car hit the cyclist and knocked him off. The defendant stopped after realising he had struck the cyclist.”
> Community sentence for van driver convicted of killing cyclist
According to Dickinson, the cyclist suffered memory loss in the collision and can only remember waking up with a head injury four days later in hospital, where he remained for two weeks. A CT scan revealed that he had suffered a skull fracture and bleeding of the brain.
In two victim statements, the cyclist, a former addict, revealed that he had managed to steer his life back on track before the incident but that the effects of the crash had been “catastrophic”. He said that eating is now an inconvenience, he can so longer smell or taste food, he has problems with his eyesight, short-term memory, and processing information, and that he has experienced a range of cognitive issues.
He told the court that he has since relapsed and is currently struggling to fight his addiction due to the brain injury suffered in July last year. The cyclist added that the aftermath of the collision will affect him and his family for years to come.
Mitigating, Ekwall Tiwana argued that taxi driver Israar – who said he is “very sorry” for what had happened – had a clean driving record, no previous convictions, and that his driving on the day of the crash was “an impulsive, reckless decision”.
“The doctor who examined the injuries stated the injuries would have been significantly mitigated if the cyclist was wearing a helmet,” Tiwana added.
> Drink driver who ploughed into cyclist with friend riding on bonnet jailed for 14 months
Reader Amy Jacobs concluded: “As you approached the roundabout you were in the right-hand lane. The cyclist was to your left. You cut across him, knocking the bike from underneath him causing his head to hit the road.
“This was committed in a few seconds. He sustained a brain injury. It was life-changing for him. He had a fracture to his skull and a bleed in the brain. He was kept in hospital for two weeks.
“You were in the wrong lane. Despite knowing he was in the inside lane you decided to turn across him. In my judgement, you thought he was turning left, and you were taken by surprise when he did not.
“It is aggravated by the fact it was a cyclist. They are vulnerable road users and you have a duty to take extra care in respect of them. He was not doing anything wrong. You were the one who cut across him.
“In my view no prison sentence is going to seem long enough to him and his family. It seems that this was a short lapse in an otherwise unblemished driving history. You are working to improve your life.”
Along with his suspended sentence and driving ban, Israar was ordered to pay £400 in costs.
Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
Latest Comments
- biking59boomer 4 sec ago
How it used to be in Bedford at rush hour
- mark1a 17 min 24 sec ago
Thankfully, there was a massive clue at the top of the article.
- Oldfatgit 34 min 59 sec ago
The no-option option:...
- john_smith 1 hour 8 min ago
"Not really - use of the word 'accident' implies that an incident was unavoidable."...
- chrisonabike 1 hour 31 min ago
But did you go to The Netherlands though? ...
- Hirsute 2 hours 18 min ago
I didn't read it like that as strict liability was in quotes. I think they meant the concept has been introduced at a very low level and can be...
- mattw 2 hours 29 min ago
It's pathetically NY Authorities, isn't it - hypocrisy on an heroic scale?...
- chrisonabike 2 hours 35 min ago
I did! Of all the animals I've seen on bicycles dogs always look the most relaxed.
- The_Ewan 3 hours 42 min ago
I don't think that's a 'very large Garmin', I think that's a phone on a QuadLock mount.
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115 comments
Unfortunately there's an epidemic of bad science out there, especially as scientific careers are based on quantity of published papers and not their quality. Along with the reproduction crisis (many studies are not reproduced and those that do often arrive at different conclusions), there's also a whole host of problems with using statistical analysis that are not at all obvious to those inexperienced with statistics (I'd definitely include myself). Berkson's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkson%27s_paradox) is probably the most relevant with trying to analyse hospital admissions: https://towardsdatascience.com/top-3-statistical-paradoxes-in-data-science-e2dc37535d99?gi=90b15cdbcdfc
I'm just fed up with people quoting the worst of bad science and claiming it's valid.[/quote]
Well thanks in advance for sharing the good science.
Thanks HP for sharing that article, but to me it reads like a list of things that some doctors have said (and it's a pretty short list too) based on their own experience and none of it is convincing. At least one of them is honest in saying "I don’t know if [helmets] do much to protect the inner part of the brain". There is also some re-hashed data from a study from 1987.
Cycling UK does a decent analysis of the evidence I think. https://www.cyclinguk.org/sites/default/files/document/2020/01/helmets-e...
Well thanks in advance for sharing the good science.
Thanks HP for sharing that article, but to me it reads like a list of things that some doctors have said (and it's a pretty short list too) based on their own experience and none of it is convincing. At least one of them is honest in saying "I don’t know if [helmets] do much to protect the inner part of the brain". There is also some re-hashed data from a study from 1987.
Cycling UK does a decent analysis of the evidence I think. https://www.cyclinguk.org/sites/default/files/document/2020/01/helmets-e...
Yeah, I didn't intend it to be taken as definitive, but more as a possibility. There's also the Dr Ian Walker study on close passing that suggests that helmets increase danger although the study is way too small to be authoritative http://drianwalker.com/overtaking/index.html
There's a bunch of interesting stuff on his website (despite him not supporting HTTPS - that bugs me): http://drianwalker.com/
I realise, and I genuinely appreciate you sharing. In an ideal world, we would be able to test the theory presented and create some data to support or disprove the theory. Unfortunately to do so effectively we would need to subject twins to identical collisions, one with and one without a helmet and see whether they have different outcomes. And not just one set of twins, but many to create a statistically significant result.
When my revolution comes, I'll put it on the to do list ;-).
I agree that the link between close passing and helmet use is interesting. It could present a reason to forego helmets, but in my view it's more of a reason to crack down on close passing, which we should be doing anyway.
-Thanos enters the chat-
Ah but would he use the reality stone to test the theory, or just click his fingers and wipe out every motorist who has ever close-passed? I hope the latter.
Yes! Over THIRTY years later this Thompson Rivara shit is still being rolled out in politics, the media and even in a f... cycling forum as proof of god knows what. I laughed when really I want to weep...
“The doctor who examined the injuries stated the injuries would have been significantly mitigated if the cyclist was wearing a helmet,” Tiwana added.
'The injuries would have been mitigated had they been wearing a stab vest.'
Are pedestrians and vehicle passengers also subject to doctor statements about whether PPE would have reduced their injuries ? Any other crimes where PPE is introduced and commented on ?
We appear to have made roughly the same comment within 7 seconds of each other, chapeux 🙃
And you're both right. The doctor's statement was completely unwarranted and has no validity. It's really frightening that people rigorously trained in use of evidence and diagnosis can make such statements without the faintest evidence to support it.
I can think of several cases, both famous and in my own experience, where doctors have said that death would/would not have been the likely outcome if the person in the car hadn't/had been wearing a seatbelt.
I've also gone over a couple of bonnets while cycling, and hit my helmeted head. It hurt, but I wasn't seriously concussed (or worse). Having fallen and hit my unhelmeted head at similar velocities, and having blacked out on both occasions, I'm minded to agree with my GPs who both felt the helmet was likely to have helped.
I don't know why this is so hard for some anti-helmet types to accept. I don't think they should be mandatory for adults, and I'm quite aware they will do nothing if I'm run over. But, having hit my head against the ground more often than I'd like, I've had better outcomes in the times it's happened with a helmet on. I don't find wearing one difficult, uncomfortable or inconvenient, so I wear one because I don't want to go temporarily blind again if I fall and hit my head. It doesn't surprise me that my doctor thinks this is a good idea.
Hear hear! Frankly, I think that by pretending that helmets are irrelevant to a collision involving a severe head injury, the anti-helmet types lose all credibility.
I get that helmets aren't relevant to a broken leg, but to say that they don't help head injuries is disingenuous and undermines available scientific studies.
Given that you seem to be suffering considerable bias yourself, it's hard to accept your view that others are biased.
You are right, and some studies show massive benefits from cycle helmet wearing, but the problem is that these are not proven to exist in population level studies. The first studies are short term, small scale, using low reliability methodology, while the latter are long term, large scale and highly reliable. You appear to believe that you are right and everyone who disagrees with you is wrong, but you ignore the most reliable evidence; why?
I don't think anyone has put any 'reliable evidence' to me. Perhaps I missed it.
Edit: I genuinely would stop wearing a helmet if someone showed me evidence that they made injuries worse. Please do share if you can.
There's a bunch of research listed here: https://www.cyclehelmets.org/1146.html
I don't know how reliable it is though
Well there's my bedtime reading sorted for the next couple of weeks! Thanks for sharing
Agreed. I can only speak from limited personal experience but having hit my head on frozen grass after losing the front wheel I almost blacked out. I remember feeling I'd like to just relax and go to sleep but I managed to resist. No problems since, as far as I know.
I also came off at a mini roundabout in rain and hit my head on the road. I was wearing a helmet this time, I usually do in the rain, and had no problems head wise. The only thing that was damaged was my pride.
When I went over a bonnet, and when I went over the handlebars after the front brake locked up, I wasn't wearing a helmet but I was younger and bouncier than I am now and managed to not hit my head in either incident. I don't know what would have happened if I had been wearing a helmet. I suspect it's possible that I wouldn't have been able to protect my head instinctively and it may have lead to a twisting injury which is, I believe, the down side of wearing a helmet.
One final thought. I wonder what would have happened in the Charlie Alliston case if the pedestrian had been wearing a helmet. I don't remember that being mentioned at the trial.
That might be because people don't expect pedestrians to wear helmets. Unlike for cyclists, the highway code doesn't say that pedestrians should wear them
Good point.
As others said, they are neither seat belts (legally required) nor pedestrian helmets (unknown but cycle helmet here would at least be within specification to protect against most falls). So there's an odd situation here where not having one can be prejudicial in court but the circumstances of impact may often be well beyond the maximum protection they could deliver.
The difference between "could have helped maybe" and "irrelevant" are not well understood by the public, the law or even the medical profession. (Lawyers might also use this to say "but not wearing it shows this person was careless *in general*...").
UK legal fudge (or flexibility, you decide).
I hear your "could it have helped in my case"? It's hard to be left with "if only" or "what if".
Not wishing to victim blame, but a pedestrian helmet would have had a reasonable chance of saving her life as her fall was within the parameters of bike helmet tests. However, I think it would be inappropriate to mention PPE at trials unless it's mandatory (e.g. construction site).
Thank you for so graphically demonstrating the risk compensation effect; merely one of the reasons why helmets don't reduce the death rate of cyclists.
It's not a matter of being pro or anti helmet but whether PPE should be brought up by the defence in a criminal trial.
If the argument is the cyclist should have been wearing PPE, then the counter argument is "you saw the person had no PPE but you did not adapt your driving to this".
There might well be an exploration of PPE in a civil case for damages, but in a criminal trial I don't see this as relevant.
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Under our system, 'the truth' is of no relevance to lawyers in court.
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They are there to make the best case possible for their client.
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As such, a defence lawyer would be remiss in their duties if they did not bring up helmet/lights/PPE (no matter that most of us seem to agree that these issues should have little or no bearing on the case).
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