Tractor crash left woman with serious head injury

AFARMER has been given a suspended jail sentence after the prongs of his tractor’s front loader impaled the side of a passing car and left a passenger with serious head injuries.

Matthew Wrayford drove the loader, which was carrying bales of hay, out of a blind farm entrance onto a main road where high hedges prevented him seeing if cars were approaching.

He crashed into the side of a Mercedes and left passenger Lillian Herd trapped in the wreckage with a potentially fatal brain injury.

The 65-year-old NHS worker needed emergency surgery at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth to relieve pressure from a bleed on her brain. She spent two weeks in hospital and her reading, writing, mobility and hearing are all still affected a year after the accident.

Wrayford was trying to move bales of hay from fields opposite Stover School, near Newton Abbot, to his farm at nearby Bickington when he pulled onto the main A382 at 11am on July 26, 2020.

He chose to use the blind exit instead of a slightly longer route and had already experienced one near miss with a passing car as he inched onto the road in his Valtra tractor.

The Mercedes was being driven at less than 40 mph by Ms Herd’s 78-year-old partner Malcolm and the couple were on their way from Newton Abbot to go shopping at the Trago Mills store nearby.

He did not even see the tractor and the first he knew of the accident was when his car came to a shuddering halt, he was showered in broken glass and he saw his partner unconscious, bleeding, and trapped in the wreckage next to him.

Wrayford is a third generation farmer who has just taken over a dairy and mixed farm from his father. He was spared an immediate jail sentence because it would have made his farm unviable, risked foreclosure by the bank, and left his partner and three young children homeless. The sentence means he is free to supervise the autumn harvest and calving for his 300 cattle.

Wrayford, aged 30, of Bickington, near Newton Abbot, admitted causing serious injury by dangerous driving and was jailed for 12 months, suspended for 18 months and banned from driving for two years by Recorder Mr James Newton-Price, QC, at Exeter Crown Court.

He told him: “You have expressed regret and distress. You found the experience traumatising and are haunted by the injury you caused.

“You made an uncharacteristic series of bad judgments. This was more than a moment of bad judgment but not a sustained course of bad driving.

“You should have taken greater care to reduce the risk when you emerged onto an A road, even if it was quiet. There was the possibility of cars driving at speed, as they were entitled to do.

“There were things you could have done to reduce the risk including cutting the vegetation and putting out warning signs or using someone to alert traffic.”

Mr Nick Lewin, prosecuting, said other drivers had seen the two U-shaped prongs of the loader jutting out into the road just before the crash. The passenger in one car had gestured to him after a near miss.

The field entrance was on a bend and the visibility was reduced further by a canopy of trees that formed a tunnel over the road.