Tragedy driver ‘may have fallen asleep’

A HUSBAND who died alongside his wife in a head-on collision with a police van may have momentarily fallen asleep before the crash, an inquest has heard.

John Jackson, 60, had driven from Bwlchgwyn, North Wales, to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire with his daughter Ffion to pick up his wife Nerys, 57, who had been working abroad, and the family were returning home when the crash happened on December 9 last year.

An inquest heard yesterday that Mr Jackson’s Skoda Octavia failed to negotiate a bend in the road on the A458 in Morville Heath, Shropshire, at around 10.15am and collided with an oncoming West Mercia Police Ford Transit crime scene investigation van being driven by Bethan Davis.

Ms Davis, who attended the inquest at Shropshire Coroners Court in a wheelchair, and the couple’s daughter were seriously injured in the collision, while Mr and Mrs Jackson died at the scene.

Reading a statement by Ffion Jackson, senior coroner John Ellery said she spent much of the return journey with headphones on, drifting in and out of sleep, while Mrs Jackson also mentioned getting some sleep in the back seat.

She added that her father had said he was “fine to carry on” when they had earlier stopped at Hopwood Park

Services on the M42 to get a coffee and stretch his legs, and that he

“wouldn’t have carried on if he didn’t feel safe to do so”.

Ronald Ball, who had been driving behind Mr Jackson on the A458 before the crash, said he saw the Skoda “straying across the central line”.

Holly Wainwright, who was driving behind Mr Jackson’s car at the time of the collision, said he had “drifted” across the white lines on to the other side of the road.

Detective Sergeant Julie Lyman, of West Midlands Police, who investigated the collision as the vehicle involved a West Mercia Police van, said she believed Mr Jackson may have been distracted or had had a “micro-sleep” after a long drive and that the collision was “inevitable”.

The coroner recorded that Mr and Mrs Jackson died as a result of a road traffic collision.