A DRIVER whose van hit a pedestrian as she crossed a road in Downend has been cleared of causing her death by careless driving.
Deborah West suffered an “unsurvivable” head injury when she was knocked down in Chestnut Road on the morning of January 28, 2022.
The 56-year-old mental health nurse died in hospital in the early hours of the following morning.
Motorist Simon Hardy, aged 52, of Redfield, was driving an EDF van to work at the Openreach phone exchange in Chestnut Road.
His van collided with Deborah as it turned into the exchange’s gated yard. She was walking from the Co-op car park to an appointment at nearby hairdresser Love is in the Hair, on the corner of Chestnut Road and Downend Road.
A five-day trial at Bristol Crown Court in December heard that it was not certain whether Deborah was on the pavement or in the road when she was knocked down.
The only witness had seen Deborah seconds earlier, apparently about to start crossing the road, but he had not seen the collision happen.
There was no CCTV or dashcam footage of what happened.
Mr Hardy, whose view of the Openreach entrance was obscured by another panel van parked next to it on the roadside, told police he had not seen Deborah before the collision.
Jenny Tallentire, prosecuting, told the jury it was accepted that Mr Hardy was driving slowly, at an estimated speed of between between three and seven miles per hour, when making the turn.
There was no evidence of any fault or defect in the Peugeot panel van that could have contributed to the collision.
Miss Tallentire said “the only issue” in the trial was the standard of Mr Hardy’s driving, which the prosecution believed was careless.
It was suggested he may have been on “autopilot” before the collision, as he was driving a familiar route.
Miss Tallentire said: “Miss West was there to be seen, she was on the road and she was visible. Mr Hardy made no attempt to stop and if he had attempted to stop this collision may well have been avoided.
“There’s no obvious reason why Mr Hardy didn’t see her.”
Jurors watched multiple video reconstructions of the van’s movements, recorded by accident investigator Neil Hannis, as the prosecution sought to show that Mr Hardy should have seen Deborah before the collision, regardless of where she was standing.
However, defence expert Carlo Vaquerizo was critical of the prosecution evidence, and said Mr Hardy did not have enough time to react to Deborah’s presence before the collision, arguing that it was unavoidable.
He said the “perception response time”, or reaction time, available to Mr Hardy was too short for him to have seen Deborah and brake, after manoeuvring past the parked van.
A post-mortem examination found Deborah suffered multiple injuries to her legs, body and head consistent with being knocked to the ground by the van, including the brain injury which pathologist Dr Russell Delaney described as “unsurvivable”.
Dr Delaney said Deborah had some hearing loss, but it was not possible to say whether this was a factor in the accident.
The jury decided that the prosecution had not proved their case beyond reasonable doubt, finding Mr Hardy not guilty after an hour and 26 minutes of deliberation on December 6.
Members of Deborah’s family, who had to wait almost three years for the case to come to court, attended the hearing, as did friends of Mr Hardy.
A previous trial, held earlier in the year, was abandoned after running out of time for jurors to reach a verdict before the end of their jury service.
Trial judge Euan Ambrose offered his sympathies to Deborah’s family and said the fact a jury had to decide whether Mr Hardy was legally to blame for the accident should not detract from their loss.
Deborah lived in Congresbury in North Somerset but had previously lived in Downend for 11 years and often returned to the area, where she still had relatives.
After her death her family described her as “a very much loved fiancée, mother, daughter, sister and auntie”, who would be “missed beyond belief and loved forever”.
They said: “Deb had a beautiful soul and was always helping people, be it family, friends or in her work as a mental health nurse.”
While living in Downend she had been a member of the Christ Church congregation and her son attended Christ Church infant and junior schools.
Deborah had worked at Glenside Hospital in Fishponds, Barrow Hospital in North Somerset and in Australia before taking on a variety of community nursing roles.
Despite officially retiring in 2020, she was working part-time for Somerset NHS Foundation Trust at the time of her death, balancing her work with a passion for gardening that had seen her achieve a commendation in her Royal Horticultural Society Level 2 certificate in horticulture.