Driver ‘crushed to death by 7-ton runaway tractor’
A MOTORIST was crushed to death after the brakes failed on a tractor and trailer carrying a digger down a steep hill, a court was told.
Francis Mooney, 60, died from his injuries after the seven-ton tractor landed on top of his car in the accident on the outskirts of Glasgow in May 2016, jurors heard.
An eyewitness said the crash, which sent vehicles flying into the air as the tractor and trailer ploughed into them at speed, looked like ‘something from a movie’.
Christopher Nimmo, 32, from Avonbridge, near Falkirk, had driven the tractor towing the trailer – loaded with a 13-ton Hymac excavator – from Edinburgh that morning.
He said his brake pedal ‘went to the floor’ as he tried to slow down on Fernhill Road, Rutherglen.
He told the High Court at Livingston: ‘I tried it several times. I also
‘I wasn’t slowing down’
tried the handbrake, called the ‘‘dead man’’ – that didn’t work either. I basically tried to do everything I could to warn any other drivers I wasn’t slowing down.
‘I shouted out and I used my hands, peeping the horn, flashing the lights, did everything I could to warn them that I wasn’t stopping.’
Mr Nimmo said that after steering to avoid crashing down a steep verge, the next thing he remembered was sitting in the tractor after it had stopped, with wrecked cars all around and people running about. Andrew Grant, the haulage contractor who owned the JCB Fastrac tractor and the Herron low-loader involved, is on trial charged with the culpable homicide of Mr Mooney.
He is charged with using goods vehicles for hire or reward without an operator’s licence in force. The prosecution alleges that the tractor and low-loader rig combination ‘constituted a heavy goods vehicle’ – which Grant had permitted Mr Nimmo to drive without the required HGV driving licence or insurance.
Grant, 36, is also charged with culpably and recklessly causing Mr Nimmo to drive the vehicle and its load while the braking systems were defective.
Grant denies committing the offences at his home and yard in Mid Calder, West Lothian, and at various locations in Scotland between March 2014 and May 2016. The trial, before Lord Armstrong, continues.