One driver's roadside death is 'error of judgement'.
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• A truck driver died because another driver failed to see him and his vehicle until it was too late, an inquest heard last week.
Lionel Poultney only started to swerve out of the way 14m before reaching Gary Biles, who was standing alongside his artic adjusting loose curtain straps.
Poultney's Safeway 38-tonner hit Biles and the rear corner of his Swift Transport truck on the A417 Brockworth by-pass near Gloucester.
Biles of Blakeney, Gloucestershire, died almost instantly from multiple injuries which included a severed arm, the Gloucester coroner David Gibbons was told.
At last weeks inquest Poultney, of Bewdley, Worcestershire, did not give evidence about the crash after being advised that, as he has been reported for careless driving, he did not have to say anything which might incriminate him. However, he made a public apology to Biles' grieving family sitting opposite him.
'I should like to pass my condolences to the family of the dead man," he said. "I have been on the road for 40 years and I have avoided accidents for 40 years. This time, to their loss and my disgrace, I did not. From the bottom of my heart I am deeply sorry."
The inquest heard that the accident happened at about 05:00hrs on 29 April on a stretch of the A417 close to Junction 11A of the M5 and a Junction with the A46.
Poultney was driving to the Safeway store at Down Hatherley, Cheltenham, and was staying in the nearside lane ready to pull off onto the A46.
Biles had stopped his truck partly on the nearside lane, because the curtains on the trailer were flapping and he wanted to tighten them. The inquest heard that Biles had failed to put on his reflective safety jacket and might have been obscuring the offside hazard light on his semi as he worked on the straps.
Accident investigator PC Peter Edwards said that Poultney had apparently only had about five hours' sleep in the 24 hours before the accident.
Edwards said Biles had shown poor judgement to stop where he did to make the strap adjustment and was careless about his safety by not putting on his reflective jacket.
"But Mr Poultney exercised even poorer judgement in failing to see that there was a stationary lorry in his pathway: he concluded.
This accident was purely down to error of judgement.''