The wives of two cyclists who lost their lives in 2020 are suing the driver who struck them from behind and ran them over for more than £200,000 in damages, after his two-year prison sentence was suspended by the judge despite pleading guilty in court.

Andy Coles, 56, and Damien Natale, 52, were enjoying a sunny summer evening ride on their bikes on the A40 near High Wycombe when they were both ran over by Clifford Rennie, a company director by profession, driving his VW Golf.

In the aftermath of the crash, Coles was thrown over a crash barrier and down a hill, and his mangled bicycle was wedged into a tree. Natale’s body was found more than 50 metres away from the scene of collision, in the opposite carriageway.

In October 2021, Rennie, of Wallingford, Oxfordshire, pleaded guilty to two counts of causing death by careless driving at High Wycombe Magistrates’ Court. However, a month later, his two-year sentence was suspended by the judge, leaving him only banned from driving for five years, needing to pass an extended retest and pay £475 in prosecution costs.

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Now, widow Tracey Natale and Mr Coles’ partner Helen Atherton are suing Mr Rennie in the High Court following the tragedy, Daily Mail reports.

Mrs Natale said she felt like she was serving a life sentence and Ms Atherton told the court that she had lost her world, and that the fatal date was seared in her memory as “beyond tragedy, beyond awful, beyond anything I can imagine”.

Coles and Natale had run event company Allez Sportives, organising sports challenges and holidays around the world, and raised thousands of pounds for charities.

Natale’s son, Brady, told the court in 2021: “In that moment you didn’t look, you took our family’s small bit of calm. You took our family’s stability, you took a loving husband, you took a dedicated father, you took a caring son, you took an excited grandfather.”

The family members expressed their frustration that Rennie had not been charged with manslaughter and the delays in the case reaching court.

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Rennie initially replied ‘no comment’ in a police interview, but later gave a prepared statement expressing his heartfelt sympathy to the cyclists’ families.

Rennie, who claimed he was a cyclist himself, could not explain why he had not seen the two men. In a letter to the Judge, the defendant repeated his apologies and ‘sorrow’ for what had happened.

Another motorist saw the appalling scene unfold and told Oxford Crown Court he saw Rennie holding his head in his hands, saying: “There’s two of them.”

At the packed hearing in November, Judge Michael Gledhill QC gave his reasons for suspending Rennie’s sentence as that he was not driving at an excessive speed, wasn’t under the influence of alcohol or drugs and hadn’t been distracted by anything “as far as he knows”.

Judge Gledhill said: “He simply hadn’t seen them. It may have well been that along that road where there are trees on either side of the road and in other places no trees leaving shade and bright sunlight that in those shadows and bright light he simply missed them.

“He should have seen them. Other people had overtaken the two men without any problem at all. They were able to see them and they were able to overtake them safely.

“Mr Coles and Mr Natale were riding perfectly properly. They were not riding abreast of each other, blocking one of the two carriageways of that road. One was slightly ahead of the other, leaving plenty of room to pass and there was no reason at all that Mr Rennie should not have seen them and this accident should not have taken place.”

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He added: “There was no such offence as causing death by careless driving and that would have been even worse from your point of view, when the maximum sentence would have been counted in terms of pounds rather than in terms of imprisonment.

“But Parliament recognised that there are rare cases when people die as a result of drivers’ careless driving [and] these new offences were brought into being.

“Both parties in this case agree the offence falls not the highest bracket of offending for causing death by careless driving, namely that the defendant’s driving fell not far short of dangerous driving. But it wasn’t dangerous driving, so it is not far short of dangerous driving.

“Just as Mr Coles and Mr Natale went out for a perfectly normal evening ride this defendant left work that night simply to drive home and spend that evening at home of a pleasant summer’s night. He did not go out to kill anybody. His driving was not dangerous, his inattention that lead to the deaths of these two men was to be counted in seconds. The consequences to him are nothing – nothing – like the consequences to these poor men, their families and friends. But they are serious consequences.”

He concluded: “[I am] dealing with a man whose life has not been destroyed as the lives of Mr Coles and Mr Natale, but it has been completely altered negatively probably for the rest of his life.

“Do I suspend the sentence? Although it will disappoint many, I think I have been able to explain why I am going to suspend the sentence. He will have this hanging over his head for the rest of his life.”

However, a police crash investigator had previously told the court that Rennie should have been able to see the cyclists.

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Senior investigating officer Sergeant Darren Brown, of Thames Valley Police’s Serious Collision Investigation Unit, said: “This was an absolute tragedy that needn’t have happened.

“Due to the manner of Mr Rennie’s driving on that early summer’s afternoon last year, two men, who were simply out for a cycle ride, did not return home to their loved ones.

“This tragic case underlines the fact that motorists need to be fully aware of their surroundings and be aware of other, more vulnerable road users, especially when driving within national speed limits.”