A lorry driver caused a fatal head-on collision when he drove on the wrong side of the road shortly after stopping off for a break, Lincoln Crown Court heard on Wednesday.
Tiberiu Dori parked up for 40 minutes in a layby alongside the A15 near Cranwell before setting off to continue his journey to Wiltshire.
But within a minute, his Volvo HGV was on the wrong side of the road and he struck an approaching BMW being driven by respected RAF serviceman Chris Showell.
Cpl Showell, who was on his way to work as a chef at RAF Waddington, had no chance to avoid a collision with the front of his vehicle ending up embedded in the lorry. He suffered fatal injuries.
Andrew Scott, prosecuting, said that Dori was working a night shift and had driven a lorry load of eggs from Chippenham to Milton Keynes, where he dropped them off at a Waitrose store.
He then continued his shift driving on to Scopwick where he picked up a new load of 300,000 eggs and was heading back to his base at Chippenham.
Mr Scott said: “The collision occurred on Mr Showell’s side of the road. The Volvo lorry was completely on the wrong side of the road.”
The prosecutor said Dori had parked in a layby on the opposite side of the road to the carriageway he was driving in and the more likely reason for what happened is that he set off after his break on the wrong side of the road.
The fatal collision occurred just 200 metres from the layby.
“The defendant was perhaps operating on auto-pilot thinking he was driving on the continent.
“The other possibility is that Dori was driving on his correct side of the road and has then allowed his vehicle to drift onto the wrong side of the road. The prosecution does not have all the pieces of the jigsaw and accepts it is impossible to say what happened.”
Mr Scott said that the more likely scenario is that Dori set off on the wrong side of the road.
The court heard that tests showed Dori had not been drinking or taking alcohol and he was not speeding. His mobile phone was checked and he had not been using it at the time of the collision. The lorry tachograph records showed he was driving within his permitted hours.
Dori denied that he had travelled on the wrong side of the road from leaving the layby and said that he set off on his correct side and then ended up on the opposite carriageway.
He admitted responsibility for the fatal collision and his barrister Christopher Martin said: “He genuinely cannot explain why the collision occurred.
“He was driving at 29mph at the point of the collision. He had travelled 200 metres. The time taken to travel that distance was less than a minute.”
Mr Martin said Dori drove 60,000 miles a year for work and had an exemplary driving record with a clean licence both in the UK and in his native country of Romania.
“He was intending to drive to the nearest petrol station and get himself a coffee. He does not know how his vehicle went onto the wrong side of the road.”
Dori, 34, of Devizes, Wiltshire, admitted causing death by dangerous driving as a result of the collision on the A15 at Dunsby Hollow, Lincolnshire, just before 5am on April 16, 2020.
He was jailed for 20 months and banned from driving for two years and 10 months. He was also ordered to pass an extended retest before he can legally drive again.
Recorder Charles Falk said he could not be certain of the circumstances and he sentenced on the basis that Dori set off on his correct side of the road and then went onto the wrong side.
The Recorder told Dori: “Driving an HGV completely on the wrong side of a fast moving road is obviously going to have devastating consequences for anyone coming the other way.
“All I can be sure about is that this was a few minutes of inattention but as a professional driver this was a serious lapse.”
“Christopher Showell never stood a chance. There was a head-on collision and in all likelihood he died instantly. His death is entirely your fault.
Cpl Showell’s fiancee Annie Hickman, in a victim impact statement, said she has been left devastated by his death.
“I miss him every minute of every day. His laughter, his amazing food, his love and kindness. I will love and miss him every day for the rest of my life.”
Lincolnshire Police said they do not have a custody photo of Tiberiu Dori.
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A 38-year-old man from a North Lincolnshire village charged with murder will face an eight-day trial later this year.
Emergency services were called at 4.23am on Saturday, July 2 to reports that a man was seriously injured on South Parade in central Doncaster.
The 28-year-old victim was taken to hospital but was sadly pronounced dead a short time later.
A post-mortem examination found that he died of injuries to his head, chest and abdomen.
Formal identification of the victim is yet to take place, South Yorkshire Police said earlier this week.
Steven Ling, 38, of Park Drain, Westwoodside in North Lincolnshire, has been charged with murder and was remanded in custody to appear at Doncaster Magistrates Court on Monday, July 4.
Ling later appeared at Sheffield Crown Court on Tuesday, July 5 for a plea and trial preparation hearing.
No pleas were entered during the hearing, but an eight-day trial was set for November 28, 2022. Ling has now been remanded into custody until the next hearing.
The Lincolnite went on a ride-along with a Lincolnshire Police officer from the force’s Roads Policing Unit (RPU), which aims to disrupt criminals’ use of the roads and reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents.
The team will support the county response including local policing, neighbourhood policing and criminal investigation too.
Operations first began in Grantham in January this year and started in Louth earlier this week with a sergeant and nine PCs based in both locations.
The Lincolnite went out on a ride-along with PC Rich Precious from Lincolnshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
PC Rich Precious has been a police officer for 22 years after joining the force in 2000 and he recently rejoined the Roads Policing Unit, working out of Louth.
PC Precious, who also previously worked as a family liaison officer for road deaths for 16 years, took The Lincolnite out in his police car to the A1 up to Colsteworth and then back to Grantham. He described that particular area as “one of the main arterial routes that goes through Lincolnshire”.
PC Rich Precious driving down the A1 up to Colsterworth. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
Speaking about the new Roads Policing Unit, he said: “It’s intelligence led policing, it’s targeted policing in areas that have been underrepresented in terms of police presence, on the roads certainly, over a number of years.
“We’re hoping that the development of this unit will help address that balance, and look towards using the ANPR system to prevent criminals’ use of the road, and to identify key areas or routes where there’s a high percentage of people killed or seriously injured on the road, what we commonly refer to as KSI.
PC Precious is helping to keep the roads safer in Lincolnshire. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
When asked if he thinks the new team will help reduce the number of serious and fatal accidents in the county, he added: “That’s what the the unit designed for. Sadly, in Lincolnshire our road network does seem to incur a number of those KSI accidents year on year, and we need to reduce that.
“I’ve worked additionally in my roles as a family liaison officer on road death for 16 years, so I’ve seen first hand the impact that road death has on families and victims families.
“I know it’s important that we try and reduce those because, it’s very sad to see how a fatal road traffic collision can affect a family and the victims of that family.”
Marc Gee, Inspector for Lincolnshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
Marc Gee, Inspector for the Roads Policing Unit, told The Lincolnite: “Every day there will be officers on duty from both teams and they’ll cover the whole county or the county’s roads.
“Eventually, we’ll have nine police cars and we’ve got six motorbikes. We’ll be utilising them with as many officers as we can every day basically to make our roads safer and enforce against the criminals who feel like it’s okay to come into the county and use our road for criminal purposes.”
Lincolnshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner Marc Jones at the launch of the force’s Roads Policing Unit. | Photo: Steve Smailes for The Lincolnite
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