Lorry driver gets four years after mobile phone death
John Payne admitted to causing death through dangerous driving
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Monday, 07, Aug 2006 09:37
A lorry driver who killed a 23-year-old woman after failing to see a traffic queue ahead of him while using his mobile phone was today sentenced to four years behind bars.
John Payne, 31, from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, collided with Trinity Taylor's stationary Peugeot 106 on the M3 near Basingstoke on October 17th last year, and had already pleaded guilty to causing death through dangerous driving. He has also been issued with a seven-year driving ban.
Payne had told police at the scene of the accident that he did not know why he had been using his phone, which was in a cradle, as he was not planning on making a call.
But the prosecution said that he had told his co-driver of the 7.5 ton lorry that he was pressing the keys because he wanted to understand how to use the new phone.
Ms Taylor, from Aldershot, Hampshire, who looked after her mother full-time, was killed after suffering massive head and chest injuries when the lorry drove over the top of her car and crushed it.
In mitigation, Payne's barristers asserted that the driver had been suffering from depression and anxiety since the crash, which also damaged six other vehicles.
Before handing out the four-year sentence to the lorry driver, Judge Michael Brodrick of Winchester crown court, explained that the aspects of this case provided an "illustration" of the dangers of using mobile phones while driving.
"You struck a vehicle driving a 7.5 ton lorry. It ran over the back of it and it was crushed and became half its length and unrecognisable," he said.
"This was because your attention was distracted. You did not see the signs ahead. You did not see the queues ahead."