Driver of HGV that killed Sebastian Lukomski found guilty & sentenced

22nd November, City of London Magistrates Court

Terence Mark Fallows, driver of the HGV that killed London bicycle
messenger & LBMA member Sebastian Lukomski, today pleaded guilty of
driving without due care & attention.

He received a sentence of 6 endorsement points on his driving license.
A total of 12 points results in disqualification. In addition, he was
fined £1000 and ordered to pay £230 costs.

More details to follow.

---

Buffalo Bill, Chair, London Bicycle Messenger Association

Upcoming events check www.londonmessengers.org

Latest on the LBMA's campaign to get HGVs to stop killing cyclists see
http://www.londonmessengers.org/hgv.html




Buffalo Bill
London Bicycle Messenger Association & Brixton C.C.

Life seems cheap in teh smoke.


--
Fat Lad

On 22 Nov 2004 07:43:41 -0800, (Buffalo
Bill) wrote:

He received a sentence of 6 endorsement points on his driving license.
A total of 12 points results in disqualification. In addition, he was
fined £1000 and ordered to pay £230 costs.

Nice to know the driver won't be inconvenienced in any way as a result
of his behaviour. Gives you a lovely warm feeling, doesn't it?

Guy
--
May contain traces of irony. Contents liable to settle after posting.
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk

88% of helmet statistics are made up, 65% of them at Washington University

Buffalo Bill vaguely muttered something like ...

A total of 12 points results in disqualification.

Not necessarily. I was driving for a while with 20 points, all separate
offences, but 'got away' with the totting up disqualification twice ...

My licence is once again clean.

--
Paul ...
(8(|) Homer Rules !!!
"A tosser is a tosser, no matter what mode of transport they're using."

Buffalo Bill wrote:
22nd November, City of London Magistrates Court

Terence Mark Fallows, driver of the HGV that killed London bicycle
messenger & LBMA member Sebastian Lukomski, today pleaded guilty of
driving without due care & attention.

He received a sentence of 6 endorsement points on his driving license.
A total of 12 points results in disqualification. In addition, he was
fined £1000 and ordered to pay £230 costs.

More details to follow.


and was imprisoned for how long? Save lives, kill judges.
R.

(Buffalo Bill) wrote in message . com...
22nd November, City of London Magistrates Court

Terence Mark Fallows, driver of the HGV that killed London bicycle
messenger & LBMA member Sebastian Lukomski, today pleaded guilty of
driving without due care & attention.

He received a sentence of 6 endorsement points on his driving license.
A total of 12 points results in disqualification. In addition, he was
fined £1000 and ordered to pay £230 costs.

More details to follow.

---


22nd November 2004, City of London Magistrates Court.

I had arrived expecting a 2 day trial. As I sat down at the back of the
court with Seb's dad, brother & best friend, I could see a uniformed police
officer fiddling with a laptop. The screen of the laptop showed cctv
footage. I guessed that it was cctv footage of the collision that killed
Seb.

The footage on that laptop, and the diligence of the policeman who was
fiddling with it, PC John Sudbury, Senior Collision Investigator of the City
of London Police, led to Terence Mark Fallows changing his plea of 'not
guilty' to the charge of driving without due care and attention to 'guilty'.

So the Crown's version of events, and the witnesses, 6 civil & 3 police, was
not challenged by the defence.

The sequence of events as put by the Crown's barrister (lawyer) was as
follows. At 0855 on 23rd February 2004, Fallows, driving Scania 32 tonne
Large Goods Vehicle reg mark X418 NHJ, stopped at a red light (she called it
'an automatic traffic signal') westbound on Upper Thames Street, at the
junction with Queen Street Place. He was signalling left, and continued to
signal left up all the way through his subsequent left turn. Shortly after
this, Sebastian filtered up on the left, and stopped behind the stop line,
on the left of the truck, with his right hand resting on the lorry.

Just in front, and possibly preventing Seb from moving out in front of the
lorry is a motorbike. Seb was stationary alongside Fallows' LGV for a
period of no less than 10 seconds. Then the lights changed.

Fallows said in a statement that he looked in his nearside mirrors but saw
nothing. The motorbike pulled away, and Fallows moved off and started to
turn left. Seb also pulled away, and apparently tried to go straight ahead
(according to a statement from his controller at Anderson Young) when he
realised that the lorry was going to collide with him. At this point he
appeared to put his arm up again to fend off the lorry, and the lorry driver
reported that he had heard a shout, other witnesses said it could have been
'no' or 'stop'. There is a collision, and Seb was killed almost instantly.
(I turned down the opportunity to view the cctv footage and I'm not going
into more detail here.)

Fallows realised that he had run something over and stopped. The emergency
services are called and Seb is pronounced dead at the scene of the
collision.

After hearing the Crown's version, the defending barrister made what is
called a plea of mitigation. This was less than entirely coherent, and
amounted to 'it happens all the time'. The Crown handed up Fallows' driving
license, and it turns out that he has a previous conviction for driving
without due care & attention, for which he received 7 points and £500 fine.

It may be that the magistrates were given more detail on this conviction
when they retired to consider their sentence; I can't say.

After 30 mins, the magistrates (1 female, 2 male, all over 45, if not 50
years of age) return to pronounce sentence. The presiding magistrate, Mr
Morrison, describes the collision as 'a tragic accident', caused by 'a
momentary lapse', having checked the mirrors but failed to notice the
cyclist. However, he said that Fallows was a professional driver on a busy
road on which he knew there to be motorcyclists and cyclists.

Against that, he said, 'the cyclist contributed to the accident by cycling
up inside of vehicle signalling left, and continued straight on.'

He then passed a sentence of 6 endorsement points, £1000 fine & £230 costs.

In my view, and I'm sure the majority of people reading this account, the
sentence is not adequate. A ban of at least a year, the obligation to be
retested before driving again and a much heavier fine would have satisfied
me. All of these options were open to magistrates. They obviously didn't
think that not looking in the mirrors is all that serious. In another 5
years, the points will be off, and Fallows can do it again without losing
his license.

The only consolation is that Fallows no longer drives and lives in Mallorca.

Credit where credit is due: the CPS handled the case competently, and PC
Sudbury's handling of the blind spot claim (the defence had been preparing
an expert witness backed defence that there was a blind spot - this has
worked before in the RMC/Barlow case) with the cctv evidence led directly to
the defence changing its plea 10 minutes before the case was heard.

What will it take to get them to look in their mirrors?

---

Buffalo Bill, Chair, London Bicycle Messenger Association

Upcoming events check www.londonmessengers.org

Latest on the LBMA's campaign to get HGVs to stop killing cyclists see
http://www.londonmessengers.org/hgv.html

"Buffalo Bill" wrote in message
om...
(Buffalo Bill) wrote in message
. com...

The sequence of events as put by the Crown's barrister (lawyer) was as
follows. At 0855 on 23rd February 2004, Fallows, driving Scania 32 tonne
Large Goods Vehicle reg mark X418 NHJ, stopped at a red light (she called
it
'an automatic traffic signal') westbound on Upper Thames Street, at the
junction with Queen Street Place. He was signalling left, and continued
to
signal left up all the way through his subsequent left turn. Shortly
after
this, Sebastian filtered up on the left, and stopped behind the stop line,
on the left of the truck, with his right hand resting on the lorry.
....
What will it take to get them to look in their mirrors?

What will it take to get the message across to even experienced cyclists
that the inside of a left turning lorry is a lethal place to be?

If the events as detailed by the Crown are accurate, then Sebastian was a
complete and utter ****wit.

clive

On 23/11/04 12:04 pm, in article , "Clive
George" wrote:

"Buffalo Bill" wrote in message
om...
(Buffalo Bill) wrote in message
. com...

The sequence of events as put by the Crown's barrister (lawyer) was as
follows. At 0855 on 23rd February 2004, Fallows, driving Scania 32 tonne
Large Goods Vehicle reg mark X418 NHJ, stopped at a red light (she called
it
'an automatic traffic signal') westbound on Upper Thames Street, at the
junction with Queen Street Place. He was signalling left, and continued
to
signal left up all the way through his subsequent left turn. Shortly
after
this, Sebastian filtered up on the left, and stopped behind the stop line,
on the left of the truck, with his right hand resting on the lorry.
...

What will it take to get them to look in their mirrors?

What will it take to get the message across to even experienced cyclists
that the inside of a left turning lorry is a lethal place to be?

If the events as detailed by the Crown are accurate, then Sebastian was a
complete and utter ****wit.


Absolutely.

Lesson 1 of riding in traffic (I grew up cycling in London and rode there
year in year out for 14 years before moving abroad. So I do have more than a
modicum of experience)
NEVER stop alongside another vehicle in the same lane. ALWAYS be in the
middle of the lane, in front or behind other vehicles.

It was a stupid mistake to make, a very costly mistake. But I think in this
case the penalty is appropriate, if not a little harsh. Had the HGV not been
signalling and then turned, it would have been a different matter, but to
deliberately stop on the left side of a lorry signalling to turn left
beggars belief, especially as he would have been below the mirrors and
possibly in the blind spot.


...d


...d

Buffalo Bill wrote:
snip lengthy details

If I understand it correctly, the lorry driver was stopped at a
red light, signaling a left turn, when the cyclist came up from
behind and tried to pass him on the left and go straight?
Sounds like suicide to me.
Under UK law, the lorry driver is at fault for not suspecting
that someone might pass him on the left while he was signaling
a left turn?

If you changed "left" to "right", you would get a fairly common
cause of cyclist injury in the USA. Here, the truck (lorry) driver
must simply claim that the cyclist, not the driver, was making the
improper pass. The impropriety of the pass is not in question,
so the only argument is whether the cyclist is overtaking
the truck or vice versa. When a motor vehicle overtakes a
cyclist on the left while turning right, we call it a
'right hook'. When a cyclist passes a right signaling motor
vehicle on the right, we call it natural selection.

Mitch.

In article ,
(Buffalo Bill) writes:

The sequence of events as put by the Crown's barrister (lawyer) was as
follows. At 0855 on 23rd February 2004, Fallows, driving Scania 32 tonne
Large Goods Vehicle reg mark X418 NHJ, stopped at a red light (she called it
'an automatic traffic signal') westbound on Upper Thames Street, at the
junction with Queen Street Place. He was signalling left, and continued to
signal left up all the way through his subsequent left turn. Shortly after
this, Sebastian filtered up on the left, and stopped behind the stop line,
on the left of the truck, with his right hand resting on the lorry.

Seems to me that in this instance the cyclist was *more* at fault than
the HGV driver, and that the charge and penalty were indeed at least
relatively appropriate.

That's in sharp contrast to the other current cyclist-killed story,
on this newsgroup, where the motorist was, by his own admission, at
serious fault twice over.

Credit where credit is due: the CPS handled the case competently, and PC

Is this coincidence, or evidence of higher standards being applied to
HGVs than to private cars?

--
Nick Kew