A jury has found that a woman driving a Range Rover smashed into a cyclist after drinking Bacardi and Coke. Janice McVicar, 57, briefly stopped in the middle of the road after the smash and attempted to move a deployed airbag that got stuck under the windscreen, before driving away.
McVicar, of Grange Drive, Eccles, then drove down Moorside Road in Swinton before crashing into a parked car and rolling her white Range Rover Evoque onto its side.
The cyclist, Jade Edmonds, who had taken up bike riding in order to get fit for her wedding, was left with significant injuries - including brain damage and a partial loss of sight in one eye - and needed intensive surgery.
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McVicar was earlier found unfit to stand trial at an earlier hearing due to medical issues and was not present during the proceedings. This means that, instead of undergoing a criminal trial, the jury in this case were simply asked to decided whether she had or had not committed the acts she was accused of.
Yesterday they found she had committed those acts.
But, as McVicar’s GP concluded that she falls under the Disability Act, she was given an absolute discharge from court without any time in jail. Instead, her driving licence will be sent to the Secretary of State to decide whether she will be disqualified.
In a ‘trial of the facts’ the jury previously heard that the incident occurred on June 7 2020 at around 6.15pm, when Ms Edmonds was cycling up Moorside Road. The road is governed by a 30 mile per hour speed limit, has two lanes with one lane of traffic in each direction and has an incline.
The pair met at the top of the road at a sharp bend where the woman was hit by McVicar's car. Ms Edmonds doesn’t remember the incident, the jurors were told.
Her Strava exercise app had recorded her cycle route during the day, and she later told jurors that she only ever cycled on the pavement when she went out on her bike. One witness crossed the road in order to socially distance from her, moments before hearing a ‘bang’.
He turned round and saw a white Range Rover with a dent in its bumper and the airbags deployed. He then noticed Ms Edmonds lay on the pavement outside a little cottage before the car ‘immediately’ started driving off.
Another witness had been driving up Moorside Road as McVicar was driving down. As the vehicle got closer she noticed the airbag was deployed and moved her car so she wouldn’t get hit as McVicar drove past. She later assisted at the scene, and advised the police about turning the woman’s phone on so her dad could be contacted.
The court heard that another passerby was on the opposite side of the road when he saw the Range Rover was ‘awfully close to the pavement’ before it ‘drifted towards the other side of the road’ and so pulled his wife out of the way. As the car got closer, he noticed the airbags were deployed, before it stopped briefly in the middle of the road.
McVicar was seen trying to move the airbags out of the way of the windscreen before the man’s wife told her to reverse into a nearby driveway, however McVicar carried on driving, going onto the wrong side of the road before colliding with a parked car and rolling her Range Rover onto its side.
Ms Edmond’s suffered from a number of injuries including frontal brain damage. She had to have her full face rebuilt during a gruelling nine hour craniotomy surgery and has been left with a scar from ‘ear to ear’.
She also suffered from a broken femur, a broken wrist, damage to one of her kidneys and she was left with 10 percent vision in her right eye.
Emergency services attended and once out of the car McVicar was spoken to by the police, and said to one officer: “I know I shouldn’t have been driving. I had a drink, I have done wrong, I’m sorry.” Following a blood test, she was found to have 168 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood - the legal limit is 80 milligrams, the court heard.
McVicar went on to make a number of unsolicited comments including: “I didn’t think I was over the limit. I hate cyclists, I can’t stand them. Some of them are stupid, aren’t they. I’ll sign anything, I admit I’ve done it, I just want to go home.”
At a police interview the next day, she said she had been with a small group of friends in her daughter’s garden where she had drunk a Bacardi and Coke and recalled travelling round the bend ‘near to the curb’. She also told the police that she didn’t see the cyclist.
Giving evidence from the witness box, the cyclist said she had been 'getting fit for her wedding' by cycling everyday, and added that she had always cycled on the pavement since being a child. She confirmed that she didn’t remember anything from the incident and said the next thing she remembered was waking up in hospital. She added that her eyesight is ‘not coming back’ as it was ‘too badly damaged’.
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