Snoozing driver’s sudden impact
The last thing Yilun Wan remembers before falling asleep was that he really needed take a nap.
However, it was a pre-slumber thought that occurred to him as he was driving on a busy highway south of Cambridge, on New Year’s Eve.
He drifted off. His car drifted across the centre line.
The consequences for the occupants of two vehicles he smashed into were severe.
Wan, 20, a third-year medical student studying in Melbourne, was on holiday in New Zealand and driving his aunt’s BMW when he had his fateful snooze that brought him to the Hamilton District Court yesterday for sentencing on two charges of careless driving causing injury.
It was 11.30am when Wan was heading north on a straight, flat section of State Highway 1 near Karapiro in heavy traffic.
He veered across the centre line after falling asleep, and the BMW clipped the right rear wheel of a Toyota Surf heading in the opposite direction.
The Surf flipped and rolled multiple times.
Wan’s car then hit a Toyota Hilux that had been following the Surf, causing it to spin multiple times.
While the driver and sole occupant of the Hilux was not injured, the two people inside the Surf were not so lucky.
One of them suffered bruising to their spine as well as numerous other injuries and had to wear a neck brace for a time.
The other suffered more extensive injuries including a fractured neck and spinal cord and a gash to their leg, and required operations to correct the damage.
In a victim impact statement one of the two said the injuries had badly affected their job as a massage therapist and she had suffered ongoing panic attacks and nervousness when travelling on the road.
As Wan told police after the crash, ‘‘The last thing I remember is thinking about taking a nap.
Then I opened my eyes and my car was out of control’’.
‘‘I asked someone what happened and they told me I went over the middle line.’’
The BMW was written off in the crash and Wan – who is noted in court documents as residing at an address in Greenhithe, Auckland – faces lengthy repayments to his aunt to compensate her.
‘‘If you were tired you should have known and stopped the vehicle,’’ Judge Kim Saunders told him.
She ordered him to pay his victims $7256 in reparation immediately.
The police had confiscated Wan’s passport and once the payment was confirmed would release it so he was able to travel back to Australia.
While a disqualification from driving was mandatory, Judge Saunders acknowledged it applied to New Zealand only.
Given that Wan was imminently due to return to Australia, where he could get back behind the wheel immediately if he so chose, it was almost a symbolic measure.
She issued Wan with a six-month disqualification on each charge, to be served concurrently.