Courts toughen jail terms for truck drivers who kill
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• by Sally Nash Transport lawyers are warning that courts are handing out tougher jail sentences to truck drivers who cause death by dangerous driving.
This follows three major court cases last week. In the first, agency driver Brian France of Barnsley, South Yorks was jailed for six years after killing six people in a motorway crash. York Crown Court heard that France was driving a Sainsbury's truck when it crashed into an overturned car and two other vehicles on the hard shoulder of the A1(M) near Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, last November.
Judge Paul Hoffman suggested that the most likely reason for the accident was that France was reading a document. "The danger of disaster was high and you took that risk with its terrible consequences," he told France.
In the second case French driver Ludovic Caucheteux was jailed for three years at Leicester Crown Court for causing death by dangerous driving. Three RAF servicemen were killed after Caucheteux's truck ploughed into their car on the M6 in Leicestershire. Caucheteux blamed the accident on a "momentary loss of concentration".
In the third case, Michael Marsh of Hythe, Hants was jailed for two years for dangerous driving after schoolboy Daniel Beveridge was "scythed down" by part of his truck's crane assembly (CM 3-9 May 2001).
The incident took place last May when 13-year-old Bever idge was walking home fror school with a friend. Judge Keit Cutler told Winchester Crow Court that truck drivers have heavy responsibility and "sac ety expects them to take care Lawyer Stephen Kirkbrigt says: "Courts are getting hardE and harder, reflecting th increasing seriousness that attached to dangerous driving Twenty years ago a prisc sentence for dangerous drivir would have been unthinkabl unless drink was involve( he adds.