Ferrari damaged in Westport accident

Dangerous driving conviction after flying bricks cause Westport accident


A MAN was convicted of dangerous driving in Westport District Court last week, after paving bricks fell off the back of a trailer he was towing, and were a major factor in an accident in which a woman crashed her car into the back of a Ferrari.
The incident happened on the Leenane Road – outside the Daybreak filling station and shop in Carrabawn, one kilometre from Westport – on April 24 last, when Mr Brian Foyle, with an address in court at Leenane Hotel, Leenane, Co Galway, was returning to Leenane from Castlebar.
The defendant had left the Roadstone yard in Castlebar with the paving bricks shortly after 1pm that day. He had around 280 bricks loaded onto a builder’s trailer, and as the bricks had been in the Roadstone yard for a lengthy period of time they were repackaged by an operative in the yard and wrapped in plastic – a procedure that had taken up to an hour, according to the defendant.
Colette Staunton told the court that on that day she was dropping her friend’s child to a babysitter on the Leenane Road around 2.15pm, when she saw a Jeep coming towards her with bricks falling off the back of it. She said this occurred on a bad bend and she felt the Jeep was travelling too fast. As she drove further down the road she encountered an accident.
Rachel O’Reilly was involved in this accident and told the court that she was going into Westport to collect her children when she saw a Jeep coming towards her. She said that next thing the car in front of her stopped dead and she banged into the rear of it. She recalled seeing bricks, but did not know if these were on the ground or in the air.
Garda Padraigh Ua Lionáin said that he travelled to the scene of the accident and saw a Peugeot with damage to its front and a Ferrari with damage to the rear. He said there was also damage to the front of the Ferrari from striking a brick. He added that he saw lots of bricks on the roadside whilst en route to the accident. The driver of the Ferrari – a Dutch national – told Garda Ua Lionáin that he had applied the brakes to avoid the bricks when his car was struck from behind. Garda Ua Lionáin said that the defendant was co-operative and had phoned the Dutch man in Ashford Castle later that evening.
The defendant told the court that he had not known about the accident at the time it happened that afternoon, but roughly five or six miles from where it occurred he saw a brick flying off the trailer in his mirror. He travelled back the road and picked up five or six bricks on the way, but when he had encountered no bricks for over one mile he felt he had them all and headed for Leenane again. Later that evening he went to pick up his daughter in Westport and saw up to 60 more bricks on the road near Westport. He said that he was not driving fast and that with Roadstone being a reputable firm he thought once they loaded the bricks onto his trailer he would get them home safely. Under questioning, he said that with hindsight he probably should have checked the load himself more carefully.
Defending solicitor, Boguslaw McArdle, said that there was no evidence of dangerous driving against his client. He contended that the defendant was justified in relying on the Roadstone employee that the bricks were freshly wrapped. He added that packing bricks and transporting them in this way was normal practice and that there was no evidence of a conscious disregard or recklessness by the defendant that would constitute dangerous driving.
Judge Mary Devins disagreed. She said that the bricks were either incorrectly packed, or incorrectly packed for the type of driving the accused engaged in. She said he had a jeep, an appropriate trailer and bricks of a significant weight – yet they flew off.
“I am 100 per cent satisfied as to recklessness. He was driving in a way that was dangerous to the public and people have been killed by objects flying off vehicles in the past,” she said, alluding to the fact that some of the cars on that stretch of road had children in them when the bricks were falling off.
Convicting the defendant of dangerous driving, she endorsed his licence and disqualified him from driving for two years. He was also fined €800 and ordered to pay €250 in witness expenses.