What WERE they thinking?
One trucker ‘was drunk and stopped in M1 slow lane’. Another, using cruise control and on his phone, failed to notice. Together, they crushed 8 to death
EIGHT people were killed in an horrific motorway smash when a drunken lorry driver stopped in the slow lane, a court heard.
As a minibus waited to overtake, its hazard lights flashing to alert other drivers, a FedEx parcels truck slammed into it from behind, crushing the bus between the two lorries
The second trucker was talking on a hands-free phone call and his vehicle was in cruise-control mode. He totally failed to see the danger ahead, a jury was told.
Minibus driver Cyriac Joseph, 52, and seven of his passengers all died in the devastating impact on the M1 at 3am on August 26 last year. Four more passengers were hurt, three of them with life-threatening injuries, including a four-year-old girl.
Prosecutor Oliver Saxby told Reading Crown Court it was ‘an entirely avoidable collision, with the most catastrophic and tragic of consequences’.
Polish national Ryszard Masierak, 32, almost twice the drink-driving limit, had stopped for 12 minutes in the slow lane near Milton Keynes, the court heard.
Mr Joseph, approaching from behind, put on the hazard lights of his minibus while he waited to pass. But the second lorry smashed into the back of his bus, forcing it into and under Masierak’s lorry.
Driver David Wagstaff, 54, was on a hands-free call to a friend and his lorry was in cruise control at
‘He hit the bus without braking’
56mph, the jury was told. He and Masierak both deny eight counts of causing death by dangerous driving and four of causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
Wagstaff pleads guilty to lesser charges of causing deaths and injuries by careless driving.
The bus passengers, all Indian nationals and some on holiday, were being ferried from Nottingham to London en route to Disneyland Paris. The dead – five men and two women – were named as Panneerselvam Annamalai, 63; Rishi Ranjeev Kumar, 27; Vivek Baskaran, 26; Karthikeyan Pugalur Ramasubramanian, 33, and his wife Lavanyalakshmi Seetharaman, 32; Subramaniyan Arachelvan, 58, and his wife Tamilmani Arachelvan, 50.
Prosecutor Mr Saxby said: ‘In Masierak’s case, under the influence of alcohol, parking up in the slow lane of the M1, an act as flagrant as it was dangerous. What on earth did he think he was doing? And in Mr Wagstaff’s case, on a hands-free call, his lorry on cruise control and he on autopilot, completely failing to notice what was ahead. Wagstaff ploughed straight into the bus without braking or decelerating.’
Taxi driver Ali Ilias, one of the first on the scene, found AIM Logistics driver Masierak at the wheel with his head in his hands.
Mr Saxby said: ‘Mr Ilias turned the ignition off, gave Masierak the keys and asked him if he was OK. Masierak’s response was “Can I go?”. Mr Ilias could smell alcohol and thought he was drunk.’
The cabbie told police: ‘It was almost as if nothing had happened and he had been dreaming.’
Jurors were told that when officers arrived at the scene, Masierak asked where the driver was, pretending it was not him. He allegedly told police ‘another lie’, saying it was 21 hours since he had consumed any alcohol.
Wagstaff, of Stoke-on-Trent, who suffered minor injuries, admitted he had failed to brake and told police: ‘The collision is my fault. I hit the back of all of them.’
When taken to hospital he is said to have told his police guard: ‘I know I’m going to prison. I’ve seen it enough. I was on the phone to my mate. My phone was in a cradle but I know I’m buggered.’
The court was told that Masierak, of Evesham, Worcestershire, who needed a police translator in court, had a blood-alcohol level of 55 mcg when tested. The drinkdrive limit is 35 mcg.
Earlier, his lorry had been seen going the wrong way round a roundabout and nearly colliding with a car, the jury heard.
A motorist who flashed his lights at him told police that there was something ‘not right’ about him.
Jurors were also told that tacograph data showed erratic variations in his speed, which sometimes dipped as low as 11mph.
The trial continues.