Jailed for child's death
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• A Derbyshire haulier has been sent to prison for 18 months after being convicted of aiding and abetting a driver to cause death by reckless driving.
Sidney Millward, of Cold Springs Farm, Manchester Road, Buxton was also banned from driving for 18 months. Millward was said to have sent a vehicle out on to the road in a grossly defective condition, causing the death of a two-year-old boy.
The driver, James Hodgson, was cleared of causing death by reckless driving after telling the jury that he had been ordered to take the vehicle out.
Evidence was given that Hodgson had been driving an unladen Mercedes Unimog vehicle towing an agricultural type trailer when it became detached as the vehicle was going down a hill. The trailer careered across the road and collided with a car travelling in the opposite direction, killing the boy who was a passenger in the back seat. An examination of the coupling revealed that the safety devices were defective, and that it had been in that state for a considerable length of time.
Vehicle examiner Geoffrey Davison said the Unimog had defective brakes and steering: the rear axle's brakes were not working and the trailer brakes had been disconnected.
The result was an unstable vehicle with braking on the front axle only.
Davison accepted that the braking and steering defects on the Unimog were not likely to have contributed to the accident. Sentencing Millward at Birmingham Crown Court, Judge Robert Orme said that employers who put vehicles on the road in such a grossly defective state as to cause a fatal accident had to be punished in a way that acknowledged it was a very grave offence indeed.