Defendant convicted of death of pedestrian by careless driving – John Lloyd-Richards prosecuted for the Crown
John Lloyd-Richards, instructed by CPS London Homicide, successfully prosecuted a case of Causing Death by Careless Driving. The trial, heard at Woolwich Crown Court in June 2025, centred around the driving of a young man who was travelling in excess of a 30mph speed limit and collided with a pedestrian who had stepped into the road.
The case involved the assessment of CCTV evidence and Forensic Collision Investigation expert evidence. The result of that investigation showed that the collision between the vehicle and the pedestrian would have still taken place even had the driver been travelling at 30mph. Using a formula developed in a Transport for London commissioned report entitled Relationship between Speed and Risk of Fatal Injury: Pedestrians and Car Occupants [D.C. Richards, 2010] evidence was presented as to the increased risk in fatalities with increases in speed; rising exponentially with speeds above 30mph.
CCTV captured near the location of the collision along with data from an onboard Airbag Control Module allowed investigators to show the speed of the vehicle was 50-53mph in the seconds prior to the collision. The breaking force applied recorded by the car’s systems showed that had the vehicle been travelling at the mandated 30mph, the collision speed would have been 26mph rather than the actual 47mph. That increase in the risk of fatality engaged by the Defendant’s careless driving of speeding in a residential area gave the foundation for the conviction.
The Defendant will be sentenced in July 2025.
