Driver with invalid MOT sentenced to twenty months for motorcyclist's death
A court upheld a sentence against a man who killed a seventeen-year-old motorcyclist on a forest road near Brno. He was driving too fast and his vehicle did not have valid technical inspection.
Driver with invalid MOT sentenced to twenty months for motorcyclist's death
A man from South Moravia has had a twenty-month prison sentence and a five-year driving ban upheld by the court. Two years ago, he killed a seventeen-year-old motorcyclist on a forest road.
The tragic collision occurred on 1 May 2022 on the Hrádková road between Útěchov and Adamov. The forty-four-year-old driver was driving a utility vehicle that had failed its technical inspection over a year earlier. According to the judgment, he was driving too fast on the narrow forest road. When overtaking an oncoming car, he veered onto the lowered road verge. An attempt to immediately return to the road caused a skid, during which he struck the opposing motorcyclist.
The young man suffered severe injuries. Rescue workers transported him to hospital, where he died the same day. The driver's eight-year-old son was also travelling in the car and ended up in hospital with serious injuries.
The District Court Brno-venkov originally issued a twenty-month sentence. The accused appealed and claimed that a pothole in the road caused the accident. Before the higher court, he argued that he had hit a deep pothole, which caused the car to veer sharply into the oncoming lane. He placed the blame on the road maintainer.
However, the Regional Court in Brno rejected this version. Both the photographic documentation and the police recording of the entire route showed that the road surface was without significant potholes. The presiding judge Aleš Dufek stated that the video clearly shows the road is narrow with lowered verges, but the surface has no deep potholes that could have caused the vehicle to drop into them.
According to the court, the man was travelling at sixty kilometres per hour when passing the other vehicle. When he found himself on the roadside, he should have gradually eased off the accelerator instead of immediately returning to the road. The judge added that the sign at the beginning of the section marked it as a forest road, which should have warned the driver to exercise increased caution.
"The defence is entirely illogical. To maintain that a driver bears no responsibility for an accident on a poor-quality and narrow road is in breach of the law," said Dufek.
The panel also pointed out that the heavily corroded vehicle without valid technical inspection should not have been in operation, and certainly not with a small child on board.
Source: Novinky.cz