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Spaghetti-eating driver gets ban and prison sentence
Page 22
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A driver who used his knees to steer a 40-tonne artic while eating at the wheel has been sent to jail. Mike Jewell reports.
A DUTCH TRUCK driver has been jailed for eight weeks by Prestatyn magistrates for eating spaghetti while driving his 40tonne artic on the busy A55 Expressway in North Wales.
Martin Veens, who pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, was also banned from driving for 12 months and ordered to take an extended test before driving a heavy goods vehicle again.
James Neary, prosecuting, said Veens had steered his vehicles with his knees while casually holding a pan of spaghetti in his left hand and a fork in his right, unaware that he was being filmed by a police helicopter between St Asaph and Northop. He was taking chicken carcasses from Anglesey to Nottingham when other road users reported his erratic driving to police on 21 December last year. Video footage showed Veens vehicle straddling the solid white line on a number of occasions.
When he was stopped near Northop. Veens admitted having used his knees to steer, and when asked: -Do you think it was a dangerous thing to do?" had replied:"Yes."
Stephen Barnfield, for Veens. said there was no disputing that it was "an outstandingly stupid" piece of driving, but it was very different from most other cases of dangerous driving involving irresponsible teenagers.
Veens, a driver for 12 years, had cooked the spaghetti while his truck was being loaded at Llangefni and had no intention of eating it while travelling. He did not take his hands off the wheel for prolonged periods, but only when there was a straight stretch of road ahead and he thought it was relatively safe. There was no great speed and it was not aggressive driving. Other road users were not inconvenienced and no one would have known he was steering with his knees had the helicopter observer not seen it.
Barnfield said that although Veens' employer had initially stood by him, it had since decided to sack him — but would help pay any fine imposed.
Sentencing Veens, Magistrates Chairman David Harrison told him it was "a very serious offence".