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P CASE TWO
Page 25
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Suspended jail sentence for tailgater
T UCK DRIVER Mark Benistoi has been given a 20-week jail se tence, suspended for a year, after being convicted of dangerous drying when he failed to stop for a VOSA vehicle.
Beniston, of Chesterfield, had denied the offence at Mold Crown Court, but was convicted by the JAI (CM 22 October).
eniston was ordered to undertae 100 hours of unpaid work and pr £500 costs. He was disqualified [r 4m driving for 12 months.
The court heard that at one st ge Beniston drove his Scania tnick about 18 inches away from a small Honda car in front of him, terrifying the occupants.
Gareth Preston, prosecuting, sad VOSA officer Paul Edwards was at Northop Hall on 5 October 2008 monitoring traffic in the eastbound lane of the A55. He had the legal power to stop vehicles to check their weight and documents, and his van contained recording equipment located at the front and rear.
Edwards pulled out with the intention of stop-checking the defendant's lorry by using signs on his vehicle to get the lorry to pull in to a checkpoint at Ewloe.
Edwards displayed left-turn arrows on the amber roof lights, but when he approached the vehicle, he quickly realised the lorry was dangerously close, indeed tailgating a Honda hatchback.
Edwards trained his camera on the lorry and the car and changed the command sign to instruct the defendant to follow him.
He overtook the lorry, but the defendant then drove extremely close to the VOSA vehicle in a manner that Edwards found intimidating.
Beniston had claimed he was, in fact, hemmed in and drove close to the Honda because it would have been dangerous to brake.
He also claimed that the VOSA vehicle "cut him up" and he drove close while braking.
Sentencing Beniston, Judge John Rogers QC said that he was sure Beniston appreciated his driving was dangerous and he understood that he had contested it because the conviction would mean he would not be able to go on working as an HGV driver.