A REDDITCH bus driver veered into the path of an oncoming skip lorry while rummaging in his rucksack on the floor for change, killing its ‘utterly blameless’ driver.
Despite accepting responsibility for lorry driver Jamie Foster’s death, Martin Clarke said his driving had been careless rather than dangerous.
But two weeks before his trial at Warwick Crown Court on a charge of causing death by dangerous driving, he changed his plea to guilty.
Clarke, 48, of Eckington Close, was jailed for three years and two months and banned from driving for four years and seven months.
Prosecutor Michael Shaw said that at 1.45pm on January 17, 2018, Clarke was driving a bus, which was not in service, towards Stratford on the A439 Warwick Road.
At the same time 31-year-old Mr Foster was driving a skip lorry away from the town.
As Clarke’s bus came to a slight right-hand bend, it crossed into the path of the skip lorry.
The collision hurled debris into the path of other traffic and left Mr Foster fatally injured.
The emergency services found Clarke trapped with a serious leg injury. He told police: “I was coming into Stratford and I leaned down to where my bag was to get some change, and I think I pulled the steering wheel to the wrong side and went across the road.”
When later interviewed, he said as he had been leaning down the door to the driver’s compartment had come open, causing him to fall off his seat.
Clarke, who had been a bus driver for 28 years, accepted his action was dangerous, and the collision would not have happened if he had not been searching for change.
Judge Peter Cooke said: “Doing what he did amounts to a gross avoidable distraction. He was prioritising rummaging in his bag for change over keeping control of the vehicle.”
Mark Laprell, defending, said: “In the pre-sentence report the author spells out the circumstances and the motivation he has in pleading guilty, not least that he wants to do the best he can to enable the relatives of the deceased to move forward, and to acknowledge his culpability in the only way he can.”
He argued that it had been ‘a short period of avoidable inattention’ by Clarke, and that many people would reach for something while driving.
Jailing Clarke, Judge Cooke said: “Prison is inevitable.
“He was prioritising the wholly unnecessary act of rummaging for change over driving the bus. The accident was entirely of his making.”
