Cabbie fined just £400 over crash that killed cyclist
Door forced pensioner into making fatal swerve
A TAXI driver has been fined just £400 after his black cab’s door hit a pensioner on a bicycle, resulting in fatal injuries.
Joseph Connelly had parked his taxi in Glasgow on May 20 last year and opened the door just as 67-year-old David Thomson was passing.
Mr Thomson fell off his bicycle and hit his head on the ground, suffering severe head injuries, Glasgow Sheriff Court heard yesterday.
Connelly, 54, admitted opening the door while his vehicle was parked ‘to the endangerment and injury’ of Mr Thomson.
While fining Connelly for the ‘tragic’ incident, Sheriff Celia Sanderson pointed out that he had not been charged with causing Mr Thomson’s death and voiced her ‘surprise’ at the charge brought against him.
Later Mr Thomson’s daughter Becky, 31, spoke of her feelings about the taxi driver: ‘I was totally gutted when I had heard that he had suddenly said he was guilty after all this time.
‘This has been hanging over us for well over a year and has been in and out of court. Why did he have to wait until the last minute? I don’t care about the level of the fine he got. It really doesn’t matter.
‘I have been robbed of my father and my daughter has been robbed of her grandfather. Nothing that happens to that driver will bring him back.
‘I suppose I am relieved this is over. My father was not the type of man to dwell on things, and he wouldn’t have wanted me to either. I have to move on.’
The court heard how Mr Thomson had been out for a coffee and was on his way home on Glasgow’s Keppochhill Road when the taxi door suddenly opened in front of him. The former civil engineering administrator, originally from Dundee, tried to swerve out of the way but landed head-first on the road.
Procurator fiscal depute Wendy McDonald said the offence took place around 7.45pm when Connelly parked his taxi with the intention of crossing the road.
When questioned at the scene about what happened to Mr Thomson, Connelly said: ‘He didn’t hit the door, he swerved round it and lost control.’
Defence lawyer Robert Sheridan said that initially Connelly thought he had not hit Mr Thomson and believed it was the cyclist’s satchel bag that had clipped the door.
Mr Sheridan added that Connelly’s car was parked just after a bend and that a private hire taxi had double parked on the bend, which the cyclist had to go around before moving back in, beside the other parked cars.
The lawyer said Connelly had checked before opening the door but now accepted that, given the position of the other taxi, ‘the responsibility was on him to go further than he would normally to ensure there were no other hazards there’.
Mr Sheridan said Connelly was ‘devastated’, adding: ‘It’s something that will live with him for a considerable period of time.’