2012-09-16 - Rider Down/Fatality, Twyford (Berkshire)

This is pretty bloody gut-wrenching:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10293094/It-took-satnav-18-seconds-to-tear-two-families-apart.html

Close your eyes and count to 18.

Imagine looking away from the road and driving blind for that long, at 40 miles per hour.

It’s a terrifying thought, but that is what Vicky McClure did as she drove along the A4 last September. She looked down to fiddle with her satellite-navigation system for at least 18 seconds, and a man died as a result.

“I hate the word 'accident’,” says the victim’s widow, her eyes red with grief. “She bloody murdered him as far as I’m concerned.”

One, two, three, four, five… She was looking down at the satellite-navigation system in the car instead of at the road, according to her own statement. Six, seven, eight… She was travelling at 40mph or more, and he was getting closer, fast.

Ten, 11, 12… She was trying to make the satnav zoom out for a better map, she told the police. Thirteen, 14, 15… Tony was dressed in a bright-red cycling vest and silver helmet.

Sixteen, 17, 18… she saw him at the very last moment, the judge and jury at Reading Crown Court heard in July. There was no time to swerve.

“I rang him but the call went straight to voicemail,” says Maxine in Lower Earley. By noon she was worried, as her husband had not returned. Looking out of the window for him, she saw a policeman approaching the house. “My stomach just went.”

The officer happened to be someone she knew. “He didn’t have to knock, I just opened the door. He said, 'Maxine…’ I said, 'Oh my God, he’s gone, hasn’t he?’. The shock and the dread and the horror, you just can’t imagine it. Millie just screamed. She went running up the stairs. Hannah threw up.”