73-year-old Mr Bowler, from Derby, <\/a>described by his daughter Lindsey as \u201cfully independent with a sharp mind\u201d suffered multiple injuries including numerous broken ribs.<\/p>\nShe told the hearing how tragically her father’s cancer later returned and he died in March of this year, seven months after the collision.<\/p>\n
And in a heartbreaking victim impact statement, which she bravely read to the court herself, she said: \u201cI lost him in March but I feel like I lost him in the crash, it absolutely destroyed me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jailing Roberts, who cried in the dock, for two years, Judge Shaun Smith KC said: \u201cYou were driving in the most appalling manner.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were doing 82mph at the point you thumped into the back of Mr Bowler\u2019s car and you had been driving at 89mph until five seconds before the crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cShortly prior to that you had been on your phone sending not just a photo but also text.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody had a chance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was not known that his condition (his cancer) would return but in the time period of him being told it was going and it returning his daughter described him as being \u2018a shadow of the person he was\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the point of collision you were travelling in a straight line and what does that tell me?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt tells me you did not see a single thing because you were not concentrating as you had been looking at your phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I say, it was an appalling piece of driving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Declan Austin, prosecuting, said the collision took place on the afternoon of July 1, last year, on the A38 just north of Derby.<\/p>\n
He said Roberts had been working in Etwall and was driving home and evidence gathered showed he\u2019d been travelling at 51mph in a 40mph limit and joined the 60mph limit dual carriageway at 76mph.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor said: “Evidence showed he had been on his phone between Etwall and the collision and was sent a photo to a WhatsApp group called \u2018Lads, lads, lads\u2019 of a digital thermometer.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe then took and sent a photograph of the temperature inside his van.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Bowler later said he pulled into the right-hand lane approaching a junction and that\u2019s all he remembers until he woke up and found people looking at him in his car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Austin said witnesses told the police how the Roberts\u2019 Ford Transit careered into the back of Mr Bowler\u2019s before hitting other cars and then the central reservation.<\/p>\n
He said one told how they heard \u201cthe screech of brakes\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Bowler, a father and grandfather who founded and was chairman of the Derby Sight Loss Leisure Group charity, was airlifted to hospital with multiple injuries.<\/p>\n
His daughter read her own victim impact statement to the court in which she told how her father worked as a chief combustion engineer for Rolls-Royce for 44 years.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cWhat I really want to stress is that before the accident my dad was fully independent with no physical limitations and his mind remained sharp.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad always told me to look at life with the glass half full.<\/p>\n
“Only 24 hours after being told he was cancer-free, I got a call from the police to say he was being airlifted to the hospital following a car accident.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t explain the shock I felt going from elation to complete devastation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roberts, of Nesbitt Street, Sutton-in-Ashfield, pleaded guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving.<\/p>\n
He has no previous convictions but just months before the collision was handed three and six points for two different speeding offences.<\/p>\n
Lesley Pidcock, mitigating, urged the judge to suspend the inevitable prison term.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cHe was driving too fast and he knew that was dangerous but he stopped at the scene and sat down with one witness telling them \u2018I tried to stop but I was too late\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
As well as the jail term, the judge disqualified Roberts from driving for two years and 10 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 82mph van driver was texting a ‘lads, lads, lads’ WhatsApp group moments before the crash Aaron Roberts(Image:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1063260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[291855,30,188,291856,548,12,1678,16,15],"class_list":["post-1063259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-uk","category-united-kingdom","tag-a38","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-etwall","tag-ford","tag-news","tag-rolls-royce","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116849172814300487","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1063259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1063259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1063260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1063259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1063259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1063259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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