John Howard Robert, 65, of Route des Coutures, Vale, admitted counts of dangerous driving and doing an act intended to pervert the course of public justice, having initially denied it. He was sentenced to community service and taken off the roads for two and a half years.
Prosecuting Advocate Phoebe Cobb told the court how the collision had occurred last November at 6.35pm at Les Sablons, St Peter’s. The car was fitted with a dashcam which recorded what was happening in front and within the vehicle, including audio.
When officers arrived at the scene they noticed a cable hanging down from above the rear view mirror within the taxi. The dashcam and its mounting bracket were found in a nearby bush with the help of a police dog.
Footage recovered from it began when the vehicle was at Vazon. The defendant could clearly be seen using his mobile phone while driving from the reflection in his glasses. After using the phone he was seen to turn the interior light off with his other hand which meant he could not have been holding the steering wheel. He spent more time looking down at his phone as he was driving and lifted his head only briefly to view the road ahead. At one point he clipped a kerb.
After colliding with the cyclist – Orkney Island Games competitor and former Velo Club president Alex Margison – he apologised to him and called for an ambulance. The rider suffered soft tissue damage to a shoulder and injured a finger in the crash.
In interview, Robert claimed he had been under the influence of carbon monoxide poisoning at the time as he said the vehicle’s exhaust had been leaking. Police had the vehicle checked by professionals who said that was not true.He gave no comment responses to most questions but did claim that the cyclist had been riding in the middle of the road. He had not told officers about the dashcam because he had not thought that he needed to.
In a victim impact statement that was read to the court, Mr Margison said he had suffered emotional trauma and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness when he knew that the taxi was going to collide with him.
The defendant’s initial denials to the charges had only prolonged his distress. He feared at one point that the crash would have ruled him out of competing in the Island Games.
Defending, Advocate Clare Tee said there was nothing she could say that would makes the offences seem any less serious than what the court had just been told. It was fortunate that the cyclist’s injuries had not been worse.
It had been a lack of judgment on her client’s part and he had panicked when disposing of the dashcam. He had not driven since this incident and was now in the process of selling his taxi plate. He maintained that he had been unwell at the time.
Judge Gary Perry said he totally rejected the defendant’s contention about carbon monoxide poisoning.
‘That was quite frankly ridiculous,’ he said.
He had put other road users at risk and then, to protect his own skin, he had disposed of the dashcam when the cyclist must have been lying in the road.
It was only that he had a long driving record with no convictions that prevented him from going to prison, he said.
Robert was ordered to perform 140 hours of community service as a direct alternative to five months in prison for attempting to pervert the course of justice. Eighty hours as a direct alternative to two months, concurrent, was meted for dangerous driving, along with a licence suspension of two and half years.
