The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
No ban for doctor who knocked down OAP
The Associate Medical Director of NHS 24 in Scotland has dodged a driving ban, after reversing her car into a pensioner, breaking her hip.
Dr Anna Lamont, 47, was backing out of her drive in Clarendon Place, Stirling, when the accident happened.
Stirling Sheriff Court was told that Anne Marquetty, 84, was standing on the pavement when Lamont backed her car into her, without noticing her.
Prosecutor Craig Wainwright said Lamont, who had been watching in her wing mirrors for a low wall, “heard a thud” and immediately stopped and got out.
Lamont told police she saw “a lady lying on her side” at the rear of her car and realised she had hit her.
She said: “I’m a doctor, and I saw that her leg was externally rotated, which normally means a broken hip.”
She called an ambulance and kept Mrs Marquetty warm with blankets from her house while waiting for paramedics.
Mrs Marquetty was taken to hospital where she underwent an emergency operation.
Lamont added to police: “I’m really sorry... I know that sounds inadequate.”
She pled guilty to driving carelessly by reversing without keeping a proper lookout, and thereby colliding with Mrs Marquetty to her severe injury. The incident happened on March 20.
Fining Lamont £400 and ordering four points to be endorsed on her licence, Sheriff Derek Reekie said the law required him, in cases of careless driving causing injury, to take account of the degree of carelessness, not the consequences.
He said he also took into account of the fact that Lamont had been driving “for the best part of 30 years” without convictions, and the assistance she had rendered to Mrs Marquetty after the incident.