18 Secs for Satnav to change lives

[Mojoman]

It took satnav 18 seconds to tear two families apart

 

The death of cyclist Tony Hilson at the hands of a motorist who took her eyes off the road has left behind a sense of overwhelming loss

 

 

 

Close your eyes and count to 18. Imagine looking away from the road and driving blind for that long, at 40 miles per hour. It’s a terrifying thought, but that is what Vicky McClure did as she drove along the A4 last September. She looked down to fiddle with her satellite-navigation system for at least 18 seconds, and a man died as a result.

 

“I hate the word 'accident’,” says the victim’s widow, her eyes red with grief. “She bloody murdered him as far as I’m concerned.”

 

Tony Hilson was a fit and happy family man out for a Sunday morning bike ride on a wide, straight road near Twyford, in Berkshire, when the car driven by Mrs McClure hit him from behind. His body was thrown into the air.

 

As he lay dead on the Tarmac, the driver said: “What have I done? I’ve probably wrecked some lives.”

 

She was right. Mrs McClure, 38, was found guilty at Reading Crown Court of causing death by dangerous driving and is now starting an 18-month prison sentence.

 

Her punishment will have a profound impact on the lives of her husband and two young children. But then there are the Hilsons, still in the grip of grief.

“She didn’t only take Tony’s life, she took part of our lives, too,” says Maxine Hilson, whose two daughters have been shattered by the loss of their father.

The mother and her girls were together on that Sunday morning, in their detached home in Lower Earley. Hannah, 18, was watching music videos in the lounge. Maxine, 53, was preparing a roast dinner in the kitchen. Millie, 13, was beside her, folding pastry for a pie. She had picked the blackberries herself and wanted to make a treat for Dad, who had just come back after a week away.She had missed him. They all had.

Tony Hilson was a 46-year-old cycling enthusiast with experience and all the right gear, setting out on his usual Sunday ride to Maidenhead and back. It didn’t usually take long.

“He never left the house without kissing all of us goodbye,” says Maxine, speaking at the family home, “so at least that is one good thing we have.” By 10.30am, he was on the A4 Bath Road, near Twyford.

So, too, was Mrs McClure, a former podiatrist driving a Honda Accord on the way to a baby shower in Berkhamsted. She left a roundabout and entered a long stretch of road, with the cyclist half a mile ahead.

The prosecution would later say she had at least 18 seconds in which to see him and make a slight adjustment to go past.

One, two, three, four, five… She was looking down at the satellite-navigation system in the car instead of at the road, according to her own statement. Six, seven, eight… She was travelling at 40mph or more, and he was getting closer, fast.

Ten, 11, 12… She was trying to make the satnav zoom out for a better map, she told the police. Thirteen, 14, 15… Tony was dressed in a bright-red cycling vest and silver helmet.

Sixteen, 17, 18… she saw him at the very last moment, the judge and jury at Reading Crown Court heard in July. There was no time to swerve.

“I rang him but the call went straight to voicemail,” says Maxine in Lower Earley. By noon she was worried, as her husband had not returned. Looking out of the window for him, she saw a policeman approaching the house. “My stomach just went.”

The officer happened to be someone she knew. “He didn’t have to knock, I just opened the door. He said, 'Maxine…’ I said, 'Oh my God, he’s gone, hasn’t he?’. The shock and the dread and the horror, you just can’t imagine it. Millie just screamed. She went running up the stairs. Hannah threw up.”

Hannah, 18, sitting beside her on the sofa, breaks in to say, “Mum, I just remember you saying, again and again, 'How do you know it’s him?’.”

The policeman had Tony’s keys and mobile phone. “That’s how I knew,” says Maxine, whose husband sustained “devastating and unsurvivable injuries” in the collision. “We don’t know if he was alive when he hit the floor. Hopefully not. That’s something I will always struggle with.”

She would never see her husband again. “My brother-in-law Simon, who went cycling with him, said he would identify Tony. I couldn’t have done that. I was warned…” The body was in a bad way. “Simon still struggles with that now.”

She’s wearing a summer dress, and from the underside of one bare arm comes an unlikely flash of ink. She had a tiny tattoo of Tony’s name on her wrist after he died, “so that he is always with me”.

The funeral could not be held for a month. “It was sad. I couldn’t believe how many people were there. It was amazing. His boss stood up and did a lovely eulogy.”

Tony was passionate about motor sport, so there were wreaths shaped like an F1 car and his Ducati motorcycle. They played one of his favourite songs, These are the Days of Our Lives, by Queen.

“It was a lovely, fitting tribute,” remembers his widow. “Then that feeling when you come home is dreadful. Real life sets in. You realise, 'I’ve got no income, I’ve got no husband, I’ve got no handyman, I’ve got no Dad for the girls, I have to sort out the finances, do everything in the house on my own…’, and that’s without losing your best friend and your soulmate.”

The couple met at work 25 years ago and married in 1993. The whole family was due to go to Madeira this summer to celebrate the 20th anniversary. “We were very close, the four of us,” she says. “Tony and I were very happy, still really like newly weds.”

They were also relatively comfortably off, thanks to his job with Royal and Sun Alliance, which had included investigating accident insurance claims.

“We heard horror stories about what he had to witness. When Hannah first got a car, Tony said, 'If I ever catch you using a phone or changing the radio, I will take that car away’.” That was a few months before he was killed.

Tony’s ashes were interred on Valentine’s Day this year, at a church in Hook, Hampshire, where the couple had been married. Then a week after the burial, Maxine’s father had a massive stroke. “I lost the main man in my life, then I lost the second main man in my life.”

Her father, Roy, is now in a care home, close to death. “Everybody says that my dad’s demise is because of what happened to Tony. They were really close.”

She could not get access to any money for a while, due to a dispute with the bank over a trivial sum, which has now been settled. It was all too much. “I had a nervous breakdown,” says Maxine. “I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat, I lost huge amounts of weight. I couldn’t function, to be honest. I didn’t want to live, except for the girls.”

She had migraines and chest pains. “I couldn’t understand why it should happen to someone so lovely like Tony, and to such a lovely family like us,” she says. “That sounds conceited, but we never wanted much out of life. We were quite happy just to go off to the river for a walk, or buy an ice cream. We just wanted each other.”

Counselling and medication have helped, but there are challenges ahead. “I’ve still got his toothbrush in the stand upstairs. I haven’t touched anything. The wardrobe is still full of his clothes. I’m not stupid, I know he’s not coming back, but I just can’t face doing it.”

Millie missed big chunks of the school year and Hannah’s A-level grades were far lower than anticipated, although her teachers said she had performed wonders to pass at all, in the circumstances.

“I would have liked to have gone to university,” she says, “but I couldn’t leave Mum and Millie now.”

The three of them hold hands as they talk about sharing a bedroom for six months after Tony died, the girls on a mattress on the floor. “We just live day to day,” says Maxine. “We get up in the morning and we live through that day. It’s all we can do.”

Just five miles away to the north lies another quiet, suburban road, in Charvil, where Vicky McClure and her family live. Peter McClure, an IT consultant, answered the door of their detached house to a reporter on Friday, but declined to comment.

Friends in the street said Mrs McClure was popular and sociable, a keen runner who held bake sales and Jamie Oliver kitchenware parties, before the collision.

One close neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: “They are lovely neighbours, the best you could hope for, and they have the most amazing, smart children who are an absolute delight. I just feel heartbroken for those kids.”

The McClures have a daughter, said to be six years old, and a son, of about 11.

The neighbour said: “She’s never made any excuses about the fact it was her fault and that’s the type of woman she is. She plays by the rules and doesn’t have a bad bone in her body.”

Claire Maxwell, who lives on the same road, said: “We are all very shocked about what has happened to Vicky. We are supporting her while she has been put away. She is incredibly well thought of and she’s a lovely lady. No one deserves what she is going through.”

Another neighbour, Ronnie Mendoza, 47, said of the sentence: “I think it’s all a bit harsh. I know it should never have happened, but anyone could make that mistake.”

Many of us are guilty of taking our eyes off the road for a few seconds, to change a radio station or glance at the satnav. However, the evidence given in court suggested this was no momentary error. If you do close your eyes and count, 18 seconds feels like a long time.

The prosecution said the driver should have been able to see the cyclist from 500 yards away. The timing was calculated on the car travelling at a top speed of 60mph, although Mrs McClure said she was going more slowly. That would have given her more time, if she had been looking at the road properly throughout.

Instead, Judge Nicholas Wood said she was “avoidably distracted” by the navigation system. Sentencing her at Reading Crown Court last Friday, he said: “This case is a tragic loss of life and shows the potential dangers of looking at a satnav while driving, even at an average speed.”

The judge said Mrs McClure had “failed to have a proper regard for a cyclist, a vulnerable road user”. Last year, 122 cyclists were killed on British roads.

“It feels like murder because it could and should have been avoided,” says Maxine, who wants longer sentences in cases like these. “It’s an insult on somebody’s life. What’s worse is she has only been banned from driving for two-and-a-half years. I don’t think you should be allowed to drive again, if you have killed somebody.”

The days are getting harder again as the nights grow longer, she says. “I still cry every day. I dread the winter. You try being here at four in the morning when Millie is crying. We have had real problems. If you mention the word 'blackberry’, she just freezes.”

The memory of the pie causes her to shut down. It was never baked.

What would Tony say to his girls now, if he could? “I hope he would be proud of how we have coped. I think he would,” she says, and now the tears cannot be held back any longer. “Both of us said we wouldn’t want to live without the other.”

On top of the heartache, she tells me she had to go to the care home today, to say goodbye to her stricken father. She is expecting a call at any moment, to say he has died.

“I thought about not doing this interview,” says Mrs Hilson, who has found it hard, “but if you can print even one line that makes somebody think about using their satnav, anything that can stop another family from being torn apart like we have been torn apart, then it will be worth it

 

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10293094/It-took-satnav-18-seconds-to-tear-two-families-apart.html

[carbon29er]

Very interesting take on the acceptance of those who kill cyclists while driving cars. 18 months jail time for a life?

 

From the Telegraph

 

We should waste no sympathy on the driver who killed a cyclist while she fiddled with her satnav

 

“She’s a wonderful woman.” “He’s the sort of bloke that would do anything for you.” Those are the kind of sentiments shared by friends, neighbours and family when a driver is convicted of killing someone with their car after looking at their phone when they should have kept their eyes on the road.

 

As we report in a stark article today, fiddling with a satnav can be just as deadly. Victoria McClure took the life of a cyclist with a wife, two children and a thriving career – all as a result of her inattention for 18 seconds. But while the shared middle-class backgrounds of the driver and her victim make it easy for us to empathise with them, my sympathy goes only one way.

 

We should shed tears for the daughters of Anthony Hilson, 46, who have been left without their father, and the wife who has lost her husband. McClure has a husband and children of her own, also deserving of a place in our thoughts. But the driver herself? She didn’t just make a mistake.

 

No one who kills with their car as a result of that kind of gross negligence just “makes a mistake”. A speeding motor vehicle is a weapon in reckless hands. It doesn’t matter if that driver is a nice woman who bakes cakes and cares about her community. Fiddling with a satnav as you move down a road at 60mph is inexcusable. It is too easy to say: “But it could happen to any of us”.

 

There's a common tone to these stories that focuses on the technology and puts the blame on the distraction of screens. There is something in that. Manufacturers of smartphones and GPS devices can work harder to prevent their misuse while driving and ensure drivers focus not on the screen but the road. But someone who makes the choice to get behind the wheel is willingly agreeing to take on a serious responsibility.

 

As we might have predicted, a neighbour has come to McClure's defence. “No one deserves what she is going through,” he says. He could not be more wrong. Eighteen months in jail is a small price to pay for the life she took and those she has ruined.