Driver caused four deaths
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by Keith McLeod • A lorry driver who caused four deaths in a pile-up on the M74 has been jailed for 15 months and banned from driving for 10 years by a Scottish court.
The sentence followed a week-long case in Hamilton Sheriff Court in which Ean Barr was accused of causing deaths by dangerous driving of four people.
The crash at a contraflow section of the road near Larkhall, Lanarkshire, killed three of the McKernon family from Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, and a lone driver, Ian Campbell, who was thrown out of his Espace and into the path of another vehicle.
Barr's 38-tonner smashed into the McKernons' Cavalier family saloon when he swerved to avoid a lorry that had stopped in the contraflow. His tachograph showed he had been travelling at 64mph in the 50mph contraflow. It also indicated that his speed had topped 70mph on the journey from Birmingham for his employer Drummond Carriers.
Barr pleaded not guilty, claiming that he did not know he was breaking the speed limit in the contraflow.
Gordon Jackson QC, for Barr, said the crash was not entirely Barr's fault and that it had had a terrible effect on him. "He has been receiving psychiatric treatment because of matters brought on by this incident," he said. "It was a horrendous accident, caused not in itself by horrendous driving."
During the trial, experts said that given Barr's speed, he would have had only two seconds or less to react after seeing the lorry which was stopped at the end of the queue of traffic in the contraflow.