Trucker is jailed for crash that cost driver right arm
A LORRY driver who left another motorist with such horrific injuries that his arm had to be amputated was jailed yesterday.
William Brierley ignored height warning signs on his articulated lorry before ploughing into a railway bridge near Inverkeillor, Angus, and colliding with a car coming the opposite way.
Car driver Neil Black, 31, was thrown from his seat as his seatbelt ripped in two. He suffered a horrendous ‘degloving’ injury as the skin was ripped from his arm, and multiple fractures to his ribs, legs and arms and lacerations to his liver.
Mr Black was placed in intensive care and eventually had to have his right arm amputated. Medics described him as a ‘truly remarkable man’ for his recovery.
Jailing Brierley for 22 months and banning him from the road for seven years, Sheriff Gregor Murray told him: ‘Yours was a catastrophic decision with equally catastrophic consequences. You full well knew the height but chose to ignore the height restriction and assumed it was incorrectly stated.
‘Because of the impact on Mr Black and the disabilities he now suffers, there is no other option than a custodial sentence.’
Fiscal depute Eilidh Robertson told Forfar Sheriff Court that when Brierley stepped from the truck witnesses heard him saying: ‘I’m going to get my P45.’
She added: ‘When he was handed the truck by a colleague that day, the other man specifically said the trailer was taller than usual. Inside, the height sign read 4.4m. The height of the bridge was displayed on several signs as 4.2m. Despite that, the accused continued to drive towards the bridge.
‘The lorry hit the bridge, then struck the front of the car, causing it to collide with the side of the bridge.
‘An investigation found the case of the collision was the accused ignoring warning signs and colliding with the bridge so quickly that Mr Black had no chance to avoid the collision.’
Brierley, 54, of Dundee, pleaded guilty on indictment to a charge of dangerous driving committed on March 30 last year on the A92 at Inverkeillor.
Defence solicitor Gary McIlravey said Brierley had driven the road dozens of times, and that the warning lights had flashed at him repeatedly even when he was driving trucks within the height restriction: ‘Familiarity truly bred contempt of the signs.’
Mr Black, 31, of Arbroath, who has received a ‘significant’ payout from the truck company’s insurers, said the crash was down to Brierly’s ‘negligence and stupidity’.
He said: ‘I was awake at the scene and all the way to hospital, and I lost six pints of blood.
‘It has affected me in every way but I have learned to train my brain again. I had never realised about phantom limb pain before it happened but when I woke up from my coma I could feel every injury I had on my arm that wasn’t there.’
‘Awake and lost six pints of blood’