Monday 20 December 2010

Nurse killed cyclist

A NURSE has been banned from driving for a year and fined £300 after causing the death of a Lincolnshire pensioner.

Wendy Walmsley, 39, was attempting to turn right on to the A159 North Street in Gainsborough, at around 8.35am on May 17, when she failed to see 68-year-old cyclist Derek Vickers and drove into him.

Mr Vickers, who was wearing a bright orange reflective jacket, but no helmet, was thrown from his bike and suffered serious head injuries, dying later that day in hospital.

But handing down the sentence,
District Judge Richard Blake said Walmsley had shown only "momentary inattention" and the case "was one of those tragic accidents that anyone could find themselves involved in".

This last remark confirms all my feelings about the car supremacist British judiciary, just as the risible punishment confirms all my feelings about the system’s indifference to the main cause of violent death and injury in our society and the continuing massacre of pedestrians and cyclists by criminally negligent motorists.

In the wider context, of course, there’s the reality that the NHS is a sick, diseased institution run by drug addicts hooked on fossil fuel dependency.

Some London hospitals even actively hinder cycling