Petrol station collides with Porsche

This was very bad luck for the driver as in 2009 a house collided with his BMWX5.

Neither the petrol station nor the house was wearing a helmet.

Police have urged petrol stations and houses to make sure they are visible, now that the evenings are getting darker.

The full story, including CCTV of the crash, here.

Pleash drive reshponshibly

An outspoken cheerleader of New Labour’s 24-hour drinking policy has been banned from driving for a year after she was caught drunk at the wheel of her car for the second time. 

Dame Sally Powell was a leading figure in the Labour party when Tony Blair’s government introduced the licensing laws in 2005. At the time, she appeared on the BBC to insist that the scheme would encourage sensible ‘cafe culture’ drinking seen on the continent. 

She told the Daily Mail: 'I don’t think I’ve got a drinking problem – I had a couple of glasses of wine. 

Meanwhile

A former police officer who drove his Jaguar to court while drunk to answer a string of drink driving charges has been spared jail after a judge said he would not be 'comfortable' in prison.

It was ‘an accident’

Coroner Geoffrey Saul said all three people had died from injuries sustained in the crash. He also made clear that the coroner’s court does not seek to prove any criminal or civil liability.

He said: ‘I will simply say that Derek and Ethan were in a VW Golf, which was being driving appropriately, when for some reason the vehicle driven by Mrs Lee strayed from its own carriageway and into the oncoming carriageway.

‘There was no evidence of excessive speed but the incline of the bridge meant neither driver had an advanced view of the other car.' Coroner Saul returned a verdict of accidental death.

The coroner’s mealy-mouthed equivocation is baffling, since the reason why the vehicle driven by Mrs Lee strayed from its own carriageway and into the oncoming carriageway is surely obvious.

It is interesting that Mrs Lee’s body was posthumously tested for alcohol, since in another case of a fatal crash where drinking was almost certainly a factor the dead driver’s blood was never tested for alcohol. 

But then consistency is not the strong point of the English system for dealing with violent deaths. For example:

His subsequent driving record was appalling. In July 2009 he drove into the rear of another vehicle causing £3,000 worth of damage. In August 2010 he was involved in a collision though he disputes this was his fault and the Judge therefore rightly disregarded it. In March 2011 he collided with a parked motor vehicle and failed to stop, as a consequence of which he was dismissed by his then employer. In June 2011, shortly before he killed Ms Gutmann, he attempted to overtake a minicab so closely that he removed the wing mirror. His solicitor argued that since none of these incidents had resulted in any conviction they should be disregarded but the Judge wisely disagreed. 

The judge in the trial of the police officer who assaulted Ian Tomlinson faced a similar argument but perversely decided that the defendant’s substantial record of alleged violence and uncontrollable anger should be excluded from consideration:

The jury's verdict, after four days of deliberations, brings about something of a legal contradiction: 14 months ago another jury, at the inquest into Tomlinson's death, ruled that he was unlawfully killed by Harwood. The inquest ruling was made on the same standard of proof as a criminal trial, that is, beyond reasonable doubt.

Neither jury heard details of Harwood's prior disciplinary record, which can only be reported now. This includes how he quit the Met on health grounds in 2001 shortly before a planned disciplinary hearing into claims he illegally tried to arrest a driver after a road rage incident while off duty, altering his notes to retrospectively justify the actions. Harwood was nonetheless able to join another force, Surrey, before returning to serve with the Met in 2005. He allegedly punched, throttled, kneed or threatened other suspects while in uniform in other alleged incidents.

The Wall

A 23-year-old man has been arrested after allegedly driving a stolen car into a church wall while drunk.

The driver is accused of smashing the 2010 BMW 2 Series into brickwork outside St Patrick's Church in Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow, on Sunday (April 17) at 2.40am.

Drink driving – no change

A new emission from the Hammond Organ.

The government's decision to rule out lowering the legal drink-drive limit has been criticised by doctors and road safety campaigners as "bitterly disappointing" and a wasted opportunity to save lives.

Hammond said toughening up enforcement rather than lowering the limit was the key to tackling those drink-drivers who "flagrantly ignore" existing legislation.

Ah, yes. And there’s the promise of a higher speed limit. This, too, will be rigorously enforced.

Other news.

A DEESIDE woman who set up a support group for people affected by alcohol has admitted driving when nearly four times the legal limit.

It’s a man’s life

A drunken soldier who caused three car crashes and ran over a policeman's foot has been spared prison - because he is needed to clear mines in Afghanistan.

Trooper Henry Wallace, 21, had downed a staggering 11 pints of lager and six shots in just two hours before jumping into his Mazda 323 sports car.

He was seen by police officers who tried to get him to stop but he ended up colliding with three different cars before he was arrested.

I wonder if it ended up on the prize-winning cycle path?

Police were called to Orient Way, Leyton, at 5.45pm last Thursday (December 30) after a Ford Focus overturned.

No other vehicles are believed to have been involved in the accident.

The 18-year-old driver, from Whitechapel, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of being under the influence of alcohol.

Carry on killing

Lowering the drink-drive limit has a huge amount of support from many motorists, with 87% of drivers we spoke to for our motoring report this year backing a lower limit.

That’s why everyone in authority agrees nothing should change at present.

Hit and run driver who maimed cyclist gets one year driving ban

A HIT-AND-RUN driver who left a cyclist with life-changing injuries has been jailed for six months.

Driver Richard Malia, who had earlier been drinking in Derby city centre, left Tyrone Tunnicliffe with a fractured spine and a pelvis in the accident eight months ago, Derby Crown Court heard.

Mr Tunnicliffe needed two major operations, had metal plates inserted and is still unable to walk unaided.

Malia, 21, was travelling at 80mph along Manor Road, which has a 40mph limit, when he hit 35-year-old Mr Tunnicliffe from behind, throwing the cyclist from his bike.

His Audi A3 then veered over to the opposite side of the dual carriageway and hit a parked car before speeding off in the wrong direction, said prosecutor Sherrall Pickford.

Jailing him for six months, Recorder Stephen Eyre said: "I have to sentence you for an appalling piece of driving which had serious consequences for the man you knocked off his bike.

"You drove at 80mph at night, in a 40mph limit, no doubt also having been drinking earlier in the evening, and caused serious injuries to Mr Tunnicliffe."

Malia was also banned from driving for a year and will have to pass an extended test to recover his licence.

Roundabout collides with Labour MP

A controversial Labour MP resigned from the party’s frontbench after being banned from driving.

Former Army major Eric Joyce, 50, spent a night in the cells after an unexplained accident near a petrochemical plant in his Falkirk constituency.

A security guard at the Ineos plant in Grangemouth reported that Joyce, driving a Rover estate, smelled of drink and was ‘not compos mentis’.

Falkirk Sheriff Court heard that guards on duty at the Ineos plant called police after the MP approached their gatehouse around 11.15pm.

The politician told the guard: ‘I think I hit something, maybe that roundabout back there.’

Drunk killer driver will be allowed back on the roads

A DRINK driver who was three times the legal limit when he fatally collided with a cyclist was today jailed for five years after "utterly devastating" the victim's family.

Senior software consultant Konstantinos Tourlas died after suffering a broken neck when speeding motorist Andrzej Stankiewicz struck him head on after crossing onto the wrong side of the road.

But he wasn’t banned for life. The right to drive is a human right the courts are far more determined to uphold than the right to cycle in safety. So this driver was

banned from driving for 10 years.

But that’s only in the UK. As a Polish national Stankiewicz can return to the continent and continue driving there once he is released (which will probably be in 2013). The EU is curiously slow about ‘harmonising’ restrictions on driving, even for the very worst offenders.

Cyclist killed by speeding drunk

A DRINK driver was three times the legal limit when he hit a cyclist fatally throwing him through the windscreen of his vehicle and onto a passenger.

Senior software consultant Konstantinos Tourlas died after suffering a broken neck when speeding motorist Andrzej Stankiewicz struck him head on after crossing onto the wrong side of the road.

Police calculated that he was driving at a speed of plus or minus 10 per cent at 71 mph at the time of the crash on the road which has a 60 mph limit.

The judge, Lord Bannatyne, deferred sentence on Stankiewicz for the preparation of background reports. He was remanded in custody and faces imprisonment for the offence which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years.

Police solicitor was drunk at the wheel

A police solicitor from London who killed herself and her daughter in a car crash was three times the drink-drive limit, an inquest has heard.

Veronica Morley, 47, and Zoe, 12, from Dulwich, died when their car crashed into a tree in Devon in 2008.

The end of ‘a loveable rogue’

A 20-year-old was killed in a ‘Starsky and Hutch’-style stunt trying to jump 30ft across a harbour in his car.

He had drunk about ten pints of lager and cider.

Forensic officers later said tyre marks on the quay indicated the car had hit a bollard before it plunged into the water.

ConDems for road carnage

Ministers are set to reject an official report calling for the drink drive limit to be halved, the Evening Standard has learned.

Transport Secretary Philip Hammond is expected to rule that it would be too damaging to rural pubs despite evidence that tougher laws would save hundreds of lives. An insider said: “The minister is very sceptical indeed about this idea. He is far from convinced that it would be a good thing.”

Mr Hammond, a Conservative and motoring enthusiast, greeted Sir Peter's report as “a serious piece of work” but delayed a decision so that he could find out what his chums in the booze industry thought of it.

[Woops! – that last sentence should finish ‘so that he could commission research into the likely impact on beleaguered country pubs.’]

The drinks industry argues that cutting the limit would put people off driving to rural pubs and restaurants yet would do nothing to change the behaviour of the minority of drunks who already flout the law.

Drunken driving up

A summer crackdown on drink and drug driving in the Thames Valley has seen an increase in the number of drivers flouting the law.

More than 2,300 drivers were breath-tested by police and 232 provided positive results.

The figure is 7% up on last year, when 190 out of 2,721 drivers breathalysed were caught over the limit.

Meanwhile

A drunken school bus driver who sliced the roof off his double-decker shortly after dropping off children is facing jail.

Gurdeep Singh Sagoo, 49, of Middlesex, was almost three times over the drink-drive limit when he drove into a low bridge.

After he was arrested, Sagoo told police he had forgotten he was driving a two-tier bus and thought it was a single decker.

But the good news for all drunken drivers is that all UK governments are on their side. The Home Office has traditionally resisted

pressure from the European Commission to bring in random breath tests for drivers.

President of the European Traffic Police Network, Ad Hellemons, told BBC Radio 5 Live: "The vast majority of member states already carry out random breath tests.

"We are aware that the UK is not happy about this but at the end of the day we are talking about making our roads safer.

"We can't understand why governments would want to protect drink drivers.

I can.

As a zoologist I can confidently say it’s because the House of Commons is full of invertebrates and inebriates.

Drunken driving is ‘careless’

Isn’t it marvellous that you can be drunk, run down and kill a child on his bicycle, and still only be regarded as careless. And a careless driver will soon be re-united with his driving licence after a short period of disqualification.

The family of a cyclist killed in a crash with a suspected drink-driver in Oxfordshire have paid tribute to him.

Thomas Kahl, 18, from Kidlington, was declared dead at the scene on the A4620 Banbury Road near Thrupp, Kidlington, on 10 July.

The 54-year-old male driver of the car was held on suspicion of causing death by careless driving while under the influence of alcohol.

Vehicular cycling news (two dead)

A CYCLIST was killed last night when he was hit by a car.

The 38-year-old died after a silver Ford Puma crashed into him on the A114 Ongar Road near the Passingford Bridge roundabout in Stapleford Tawney at about 7.10pm.

A police spokesman said the driver of the car lost control of their vehicle, smashed into the cyclist and then hit some trees before ending up in a ditch.

A 20-year-old woman from Brentwood and a 21-year-old man from Loughton have been arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving and remain in custody.

and

A man has been accused of causing the death of a cyclist by dangerous driving while drunk in West Lothian.

Andrezej Stankiewicz, 42, is alleged to have hit the 37-year-old man in West Lothian. The incident happened in Stirling Road, Kirkliston, at 1400 BST on Saturday.

Mr Stankiewicz appeared on petition at Edinburgh Sheriff Court charged with causing death by dangerous driving and driving while over the legal alcohol limit.

Drunk driver blames her asthma

Catherine Dean was nearly three times over the limit when she was stopped by police after a four-mile chase in freezing conditions as she drove north on the southbound A1, one of Britain's busiest roads.

But although a court heard police found an open bottle of wine in her car, the mother-of-three walked free with a suspended sentence after a judge accepted her defence that she had suffered an asthma attack and only got behind the wheel to find a hospital.

Judge Dudley Bennett was condemned by road safety charity Brake, which described the decision not to jail Dean as 'outrageous'.

pissed priest

He crashed into railings on the town's high street and was arrested by police after one of his tyres fell off his car when he tried to drive away from the accident.

A breath test revealed that Father Rowe was almost three times over the legal limit.