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Page 5
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Sleepy death driver jailed Fr !nip
• A truck driver who killed a couple in a motorway pile-up after he fell asleep at the wheel has been sentenced to eight years' imprisonment and banned from driving for life.
Paul Couldridge had been warned by his doctor not to drive after he admitted to nodding off at the wheel 15 times before.
Couldridge, from Gravesend, Kent, drove for chilled distribution firm Coolchain in Paddock Woad. On 20 September 2000 he was travelling along the M20 when tie careered across the central reservation and ploughed into an oncoming car. The couple in the car. Sheila Ryan and her fiance Stephen Williams, were killed instantly.
Couldridge had been diag nosed with obstruction sleep apnoea in 1999 and warned against continuing driving. but he carried on working— and took on a second job as a night-time cleaner.
On the day of the crash he finished his cleaning Job at lam and had 4!Ars sleep before setting off for work in his tractive unit. Judge David Mitchell said it was miraculous Couldridge had not claimed more lives: "It would have been serious enough to get behind the wheel of a motor car but you drove something even more lethal, a tractive unit that weighed between five and 10 tonnes.
"You decided to continue driving despite the advice given by doctors," he added. "You could not have had more warnings that if you drove the likelihood was that at some stage you would fall asleep."
A spokesman for Coolchain says: "Coolchain was never made aware of Couldridgas second job, nor was it made aware of his medical condition. If it had been told the company would have ensured he undertook alternative duties."