Jailed: Death-crash trucker who smashed into queueing traffic on motorway was he using phone app at time?
Trucker Niall Yeldham has been jailed for four-and-a-half years after causing a rush hour pile up when he smashed into queuing traffic on the M62 near Rochdale last May.
A
lorry driver smashed into queuing traffic at 56mph – shunting cars
‘like dominoes’ and killing a motorist.
Trucker
Niall Yeldham, 35, has been jailed for four-and-a-half years after
causing the rush hour pile up, on the M62 last May
.
Yeldham,
who was 10 hours into his shift for a haulage company, was not
looking at the road when his wagon plummeted into the traffic.
On
impact, the cars crumpled together and commuter Ashfaq Ahmed, 36, was
crushed inside his Proton Persona.
He
was on his way to Salford where he worked as a security guard when
the collision happened, at around 5pm on May 30, last year.
Mr
Ahmed, who lived with his wife in Bradford, West Yorkshire, suffered
horrific injuries and died at the scene.
Yeldham
– who has three previous offences for
driving whilst using a mobile phone – did not put on his
brakes, Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court was told.
Investigations
showed that the defendant did not send any texts or make any calls in
the moments before the crash
.
But
a Trucker Timer app – used to calculate how long drivers have been
on the road – was open on his Samsung mobile phone when it was
recovered from the scene. He later told police he could
not remember what happened in the moments leading up to the crash.
Judge
Mushtaq Khokhar told Yeldham: “Whether it
was a phone App that distracted you or you were simply
tired because you had started to drive at 7 o’clock in the morning,
10 hours earlier, one doesn’t know.”
But
he added: “A car is a lethal weapon if it is not driven carefully.
As a result of your bad piece of driving, a young man, a 36-year-old
with all to live for, all the aspirations he had, lost his life. It’s
a tragic case.” Yeldham was coming to the end of a
10-hour
shift when he caused the pile-up, on the M62 near junction 20.
David
Tempkin, prosecuting, told the court: “Other cars were slowing down
but he drove straight into the traffic in front of him. The ensuing
accident can only be described as terrible.”
Yeldham,
of Wheatland Lane, Wallasey, Merseyside, had denied causing death by
dangerous driving, but pleaded guilty on the morning of his trial.
Jonathan
Gregg, defending, told the court his client was ‘a hard-working,
family man’ with a wife and 10-year-old daughter
.
He
lost his job at Freight First haulage in Runcorn as a result of the
crash, it was said.
Pc
Paul Joynson from GMP’s Serious Collision Investigation Unit, said:
“Yeldham did not set out that day to have a collision, but he took
his eye off the road for a sustained period of time and collided with
Mr Ashfaq’s car and caused his untimely death. He now has to live
with the knowledge that his dangerous driving has resulted in the
death of a much-loved family man.”
