Death by dangerous driving charge denied
AVERDICT is due in the trial of driver accused of killing a biker while the pair were racing ‘ nose to tail’ at ‘ridiculous speeds’ of up to 100mph in Runcorn.
Liverpool Crown Court heard in Monday’s opening that Aiden Wayne Davies, 26, died instantly from multiple injuries including skull factures and a torn brain stem after the collision at around 8.30pm on Sunday, August 2, 2015.
Mr Davies lost control of his Suzuki Bandit motorcycle on the exitslip from the Central Expressway towards Halton Lea and is believed to have hit a lamp post.
Paul Simon Green, 26, of Falcons Way, Hallwood Park, has denied causing his death by dangerous driving, and has also denied that they were racing or that he was driving too close.
Ben Jones, prosecuting, outlined evidence that he said showed Green was guilty.
He said eye witnesses in a Ford Focus on the same road said they were undertaken by a motorbike and a Ford Focus RS, which were travelling with ‘no visible gap’ between them at ‘ridiculous speeds’ of up to 100mph, sounding like a ‘formula one race’ and leaving them feeling ‘startled’.
Mr Jones added that Mr Davies’ Suzuki 1200CC Bandit had leaked oil on the road as it broke up during the collision and that if Green’s Ford Focus been travelling far behind then his car would have passed through the spill and left tracks but none were found.
He said another eye witness would describe how he had seen the defendant stop his car, get out and begun ‘running around the side of his car’ and ‘appeared to be fumbling with something or checking something around the side of his car’.
Mr Jones said suggested that Green’s first instinct was to check his own car for damage instead of checking on father-of-two ● and CCTV engineer Mr Davies. The prosecution counsel added that when first interviewed Green had said his car had been 200-250 yards behind Mr Davies but shortened this to a ‘couple of cars’ lengths’.
The court heard the defendant and the deceased had been acquaintances or friends due to their mutual interest in motoring and on the day of Mr Davies’s death had returned from watching a motor racing event with a group of friends at the Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire.
Green also drove an ‘extremely powerful’ turbo-charged Ford Focus RS, the engine of which had been upgraded to 540 break horse power (bhp), which Mr Jones said was much more than a normal RS on 305bhp and around five times a standard Focus on 80-120bhp.
A police collision reconstruction expert concluded that Mr Davies had been travelling at 62-73mph when he lost control of his bike on the bend, which could in theory take a motorbike going at a maximum of 75mph.
The prosecution counsel added that Green had denied causing Mr Davies’s death, and said he had been travelling at about 60-65mph when the deceased’s bike had ‘buzzed’ him, undertaking Green’s Focus RS on the 40mph-limit expressway and exiting around the left hand exit ahead,
Green said he had slowed for the turnoff and came across the scene of the accident when he followed it round the curve.
Summarising his case to the jury, Mr Jones said: “If you accept what the eye witnesses say, or what the reconstruction analysis says, they were approaching the exit at enormous speed, that they were driving nose to tail with very little space between them, then the defendant would be driving quite clearly dangerously and contributing to Mr Davies losing control of his bike.
“If there hadn’t been a race, Mr Davies would be alive today.”
The trial began on Monday and was expected to last until Wednesday when the Weekly News was going to press or today.
It was still at the prosecution stage at time of writing.