Survivor wants action as crash driver jailed again
Man who was banned from road caught ignoring a red light
ACRASH survivor who awoke from a six-week coma with life-changing brain injuries has called for more to be done to stop dangerous driving after the crook who injured her and killed her best friend was caught behind the wheel again... running a red light.
Harriet Barnsley was standing at a bus stop with her childhood friend Rebecca McManus when street racer Sukvinder Mannan ploughed into the pair on May 31, 2014.
Mannan had been travelling at 101mph in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution – more than double the speed limit – when he lost control of his car in Hagley Road West, in Bearwood. Rebecca, 21, was killed instantly. Harriet, now 31, suffered a subarachnoid haemorrhage and miraculously survived. She required dozens of gruelling surgeries during a sixmonth hospital stay.
Mannan was locked up for eight years in December 2015 for causing death by dangerous driving. He was released in 2019 after serving half his sentence.
The BMW driver he was racing, Inderjit Singh, of Cranbourne Avenue, Wolverhampton, was jailed for a year after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving. He was cleared of causing death and serious injury by dangerous driving at a trial.
But Harriet was forced to relive the trauma after it was revealed that Mannan was jailed for a second time.
Police caught 42-year-old Mannan behind the wheel in Rubery, Birmingham, on February 15 – despite his ten-year driving ban not expiring until 2025.
Officers from Central Motorway Police Group had followed Mannan’s Mercedes on Rubery Lane after they received a tip-off it was being driven by a disqualified driver.
They pulled him over after seeing him run a red light. During a police interview, Mannan said he was using the car to travel to work. He admitted not having any insurance.
At Birmingham Magistrates’ Court on February 16, Mannan, of Roundhills Road, Halesowen, was jailed for 12 weeks and banned from driving for another 770 days after pleading guilty to driving while disqualified, having no insurance and failing to comply with a red traffic light.
Following news of his jail sentence,
Harriet, now a road safety advocate, said dangerous driving “just doesn’t seem to be taken seriously”.
She told the Birmingham Post: “I make a point to never focus on the driver. No punishment will ever be enough. And I don’t know how they’ll ever stop him from breaking more rules of the road.
“But something more needs to be done to deter this kind of behaviour,
and dangerous driving in general. It just doesn’t seem to be taken seriously.”
Harriet said she had always been conscious of cars as ‘big hunks of metal that could do damage instantly’. After her death, Rebecca’s parents criticised the car manufacturing industry for creating powerful vehicles that can hit speeds of more than 100mph.
In a family statement, they added: “The constant marketing of performance cars in terms of speed and thrills with no acknowledgement to road safety or the Road Traffic Act is despicable.
“Performance cars have no place on the road.”
Investigating officer Pc Jason Berry said: “Mannan showed total disregard for the order from the court which banned him from driving for ten years. He now faces more time behind bars and I hope he uses this time to reflect on his actions.”
Something more needs to be done to deter this kind of behaviour, and dangerous driving in general. Harriet Barnsley