‘I just had a bad feeling…I knew. I saw him in the road’

Agony for wife as she came upon scene of crash that killed her husband Exclusive

Amy Coates and husband Adam had spent the day together in Canterbury where he had left his Honda 600 to be serviced.

Mr Coates was given a courtesy bike by Kent Motor Cycles and left for home minutes ahead of his wife who was driving the family car. She later told police how she came upon an incident and pulled over to try to track her husband through an app on her iPhone

She said: “I knew Adam was in front of me and I just had a bad feeling. The app said he was near and on that road. I just knew.

“I got out of the car and went over to see what was happening. I saw him in the road.”

Prosecutor Dianne Chann said that the accident happened on a sunny summer’s day in July last year on the A28 near Godmersham.

The driver of the car, Claire Calnan, 39, of Faversham Road, Kennington, has denied causing death by driving carelessly.

She was travelling in the opposite direction and was turning into the village hall when the crash happened.

The first motorist on the scene Mrs Rosemary Waller said, in a statement read to the jury, that she found Calnan sitting in her car calling the emergency services on her mobile phone.

Nearby, was a motorcycle with Mr Coates lying in the road “dying or already dead” after suffering fatal injuries.

Calnan told Mrs Waller: “Where did he come from? I had my indicator on from right back there. He came out of nowhere.”

It was then Mrs Waller saw a distressed woman running down the road calling out the name of “Adam”.

A student midwife and a paramedic, who were travelling along the road, stopped to give Mr Coates aid.

The prosecutor said the crash happened on a stretch of road in which Calnan had a clear view of 320 metres.

“She was driving towards Canterbury and was turning right and was in the opposite carriageway when the collision happened.

Calnan would later tell police that it all happened “in a nanosecond” after she had “double checked” that no vehicles were approaching.

She said she suddenly saw the motorcyclist’s face and he was so close she “could almost touch him before there was a bang”.

The prosecutor said: “Either she didn’t see Mr Coates because she wasn’t keeping a proper look out, or she saw him and thought she could make the turn in time or she was distracted by something.

“There was no reason for Calnan not to have seen Mr Coates on his motorbike before she turned into his path. He had no opportunity to swerve or take avoiding action.

“Why she didn’t see the motorcyclist we may never know,” she added.

The prosecutor said: “Mr Coates was not a bad motorcyclist; he was not at fault, because he was riding on the correct side of the road and properly positioned in the road. It was Calnan who was in the wrong place.”

She claimed that Mr Coates would have been visible for up to 320 metres – and the bike had its lights on.

A police accident expert said it would have taken, on average, 1.35 seconds to turn into the hall car park.

“For Mr Coates to have covered the 320 metres he would have had to be travelling up to 530mph and obviously that didn’t happen,” said the prosecutor.

The trial continues.

Tributes left at the crash site where motorcyclist Adam Coates died