Taxi driver on trial accused of careless driving

By Declan Brennan

A taxi driver has denied she was driving carelessly when her car hit an elderly woman crossing the road on a winter’s morning five years ago.

Sinead Roche (43) continued to drive her car after knocking the pedestrian down but returned to the scene minutes later, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.

Ms Roche of Rutland Grove, Crumlin is on trial charged with careless driving causing serious bodily harm to Margaret Rooney at Sundrive rd., Crumlin on December 4, 2016.

She is also charged with failing to offer assistance after her car was involved in causing an injury, failing to stay at the scene and failing to report to gardaí.

She has pleaded not guilty to all four counts.

The trial has heard evidence that at around 7.15am Ms Roche was carrying a passenger to work when she heard a bang and “panicked”.

The passenger testified that it was “pitch black” at the time but that “it was starting to get bright”.

Ms Roche told gardaí that she slowed the car and looked in her rear view mirror but didn’t see anything.

She continued to drive on to the passenger’s destination nearby.

She then drove back to the scene and saw a woman lying on the road with some people looking after her. Ms Roche became upset and presented herself to gardaí at the scene then.

Garda Donal O’Donnell told Siobhán Ní Chúlacháin BL, prosecuting, that Ms Roche told him that she had heard a bang and asked the passenger if she had seen what had happened and the passenger replied that she hadn’t.

Ms Roche told him she believed the bang may have come from hitting an animal. He said he had no suspicion that the defendant was intoxicated in any way.

He said Ms Roche later came to the garda station and gave a voluntary statement in which she said “I panicked, I didn’t know what had happened”.

She said she slowed the car “right down” and looked in her rear view mirror but didn’t see anything. She said she believed she had hit “either a fox or a dog or something”.

She said she returned to the scene “to see what I had hit” and saw two women crouched down on the road beside someone lying on the ground.

“I got out. I was in such a shock.

A lady came up to me and said it’s ok, accidents happen, she’s ok. I was so upset, inconsolable, devastated,” she said.

Under cross-examination Gda O’Donnell told Philip Sheahan SC, defending, that there was no evidence of the victim wearing “hi-vis” clothing or having a torch.

Edward Davin, a retired garda who was a forensic collision investigator in 2016, told Mr Sheahan that the street lights at the scene were the old orange coloured sulphur lighting.

He agreed that these gives an inferior quality of lighting to the modern “white LED lights”.

He told the court that a stationary person would be harder to see in the sulphur street lights, as “they don’t offer the same definition of vision as the white lights”.

The trial continues on Monday before Judge Elma Sheahan and a jury.

Passenger Amy Keogh told the trial that she was sitting in the back of the car behind the driver when they heard the bang to the left of the passenger side wing mirror.

She said before this Ms Roche was driving normally and they were talking.

She told the jury that it was after 7.10am and was “pitch black”.

She agreed she previously told gardaí that “it was dark enough to turn the lights on” and “it was starting to get bright”.

She said that after the bang the driver went into panic mood and said “what was that, what was that”. She said she replied “I don’t know, I don’t know” and Ms Roche asked “did I hit something?”.

She said she replied “I think you did”.

She said that she looked back but she was “unsure if I could see something or not”. She told the jury that “I think I could see something on the ground, I’m not sure. Was it an animal, was it a person?”.

She said Ms Roche stopped the car at the next set of lights and saw that the wing mirror was hanging off.

“She said maybe we should stop. She got out to take a look.

It (the mirror) was hanging off”. She said the accused dropped her to her place of work “around the corner” and said “she was going to go back and double check”.

She said Ms Roche was “quite panicked” and told the witness that “she was gong back to make sure she didn’t hit anyone”.

In her opening address to the jury, Ms Ní Chúlacháin said that it was alleged that the defendant drove with a lack of care that a reasonably prudent driver would have given in a public place having regard to the circumstances at the time.

She said that the intention of the accused had a limited role in this case and that the charge of careless driving was about “a momentary carelessness or inattention”.

She said that it is the State’s case that the defendant failed to stop knowing that an injury had been caused with the intention to escape civil or criminal liability.

She said while this alleged intention was short lived, it was the State’s case that Ms Roche kept driving when she should have stopped.

The court heard that Ms Rooney was aged 77 at the time and suffered serious injuries, including injury to her head and ankle.

She has since developed dementia and will not be a witness at the trial.