Sleep apnoea driver jailed following death crash

Ian King ploughed into a line of traffic at the rear of a long tailback. The 30-tonne truck crashed into several cars before driving over a car containing a family on their way home from holiday. Malcolm Dowling, 46, his wife Janice, 42, and their sons Richard, 16, and George, 11, were on their way to Lichfield in Staffordshire following a family break in France.

King was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court to three years and nine months after a jury found him guilty at an earlier trial of four counts of causing death by dangerous driving.

The trial heard that the 61-year-old from Groby, Leicestershire, was on the return leg of a trip from Leicester to Southampton to deliver a stone crushing machine when the crash happened on the afternoon of July 31 last year.

He had been up since about 4.30am and had been driving with breaks since before 7am that day, the trial was told. His articulated lorry struck a Ford Focus before shunting a Renault Laguna over the Dowlings' Peugeot. The 30-tonne vehicle then rode over the Peugeot and into the back of a car transporter lorry, the court heard.

King denied the charges, maintaining that he simply did not know what had happened.

Tragic consequences

The court was told that King suffered from sleep apnoea - a respiratory condition which disrupts sleep and can cause drowsiness. The Crown said King would have been aware he was getting drowsy, but that he failed to take appropriate steps to avoid falling asleep at the wheel, with tragic consequences.

However, King maintained he was not aware that he suffered from sleep apnoea at the time and therefore could not have been expected to take precautions regarding a then-undiagnosed condition. He told the jury he had not suffered with drowsiness in more than 35 years of driving HGVs.

Sentencing, Judge Morton Jack said: "The lives lost are beyond price and no punishment under the law can in any way be a measure of their value.

"You were in control of a very powerful missile on a dual carriageway in the rush hour and the duty on you to drive properly was a very high one. The expert evidence during the trial was that you must have had clear warning of drowsiness, this was not a case of momentarily nodding off."

The judge added: "You must have been asleep at the wheel for tens of seconds. Although you have been unable to accept that you fell asleep you have undoubtedly been deeply shocked."

'Take a break'

After the jury in the trial reached its guilty verdict, Sergeant Peter Jell, who led the police investigation, warned of the dangers of tiredness at the wheel.

He commented: "I would urge every driver to take note of this trial and, if ever they feel the need to drive whilst tired, they should think of Malcolm, Janice, Richard and George Dowling, and stop and take a break."

The trial heard how an estimated 600,000 men and women in Britain suffer from sleep apnoea.