Wasps worker late for work ploughed into students on Coventry pedestrian crossing

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Wasps worker late for work ploughed into students on Coventry pedestrian crossing

Postby dutchman » Wed Nov 14, 2018 11:45 pm

A young man who was cutting it fine to get to work at Wasps rugby club, where he was facing a meeting about poor timekeeping, ploughed into two students on a pedestrian crossing

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Daniel Collins was doing 48mph in a 30 zone on Sky Blue Way in Coventry when his Mercedes car hit the two Chinese students as he was on his way to the Ricoh Arena – the home of Wasps.

As a result, one of the two young women, a postgraduate student at Coventry University, suffered serious fractures to the femurs, the thigh bones, in both legs, and a broken ankle.

Collins (24) of Tonbridge Road, Whitley, Coventry, was jailed for two years after pleading guilty at Warwick Crown Court to causing serious injury to victim Xo Chen by dangerous driving.

Prosecutor Graeme Simpson said Collins entered his plea on the basis that he had not been late for work on the morning of May 31 last year, and it had not been possible to establish from a nearby CCTV camera whether he had been running late.

“But although we can’t prove he would have been late, he was certainly cutting it fine, and he was speeding, doing nearby 50 in a 30 limit.”

Mr Simpson added that Xo Chen was in hospital for two weeks, and even after her discharge she was still unable to walk independently, and had missed lectures and exams as a result.

Jailing Collins and banning him from driving for four years, Judge Lockhart told him: “We start with the victim. As a result of your dangerous driving she had two weeks in hospital with broken legs. One can only imagine the pain and shock, and it has severely affected her studies.

“I find you were cutting it fine, at the very least, for your attendance at work, something you were prone to do.

“You came off the roundabout at the bottom of Gosford Street, and you were travelling at at least 48 miles an hour.

“The students set off across the road. They thought it was clear. They were not counting on you cutting it fine.

“This was 48 miles an hour in a 30, and you failed to have regard to vulnerable road-users at this time of the morning when it was inevitable there would be students around.”

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