Man acquitted of dangerous driving

A CORK man has been acquitted of dangerous driving causing the death of a motorcyclist in an incident which occurred as he was dropping off his son to catch a school bus.

Gerard Noonan (42), a father of two and plumber, Castlecor, Mallow, had denied a charge of dangerous driving causing the death of Cornelius Jones from Milford, Co Cork, at Kilbarry, Castlecor, on October 16th, 2008.

He had pleaded guilty to careless driving.

Following his acquittal on the dangerous driving causing death charge by a jury at Cork Circuit Criminal Court, he was fined €1,000 for careless driving by Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin.

During the trial, the jury heard evidence that Mr Noonan had pulled off the road on the left side to allow two cars that were behind him to pass before he pulled out to cross over to the right side to drop his 13-year-old son off to catch a school bus.

Mr Noonan told the court that he checked in the wing mirrors of his vehicle three times and had a good line of sight behind him and saw both cars coming from behind, but he could not explain how he failed to see Mr Jones’s motorbike coming up behind him.

The jury was shown CCTV footage of the incident taken at a nearby garage which showed Mr Noonan pulling out across the road before being hit by the motorbike on the driver’s door.

Don McCarthy, prosecuting, said it was the State’s case that the manner in which Mr Noonan opted to cross the road without either checking his mirror or without checking his mirror properly constituted driving that was dangerous. Tom Creed SC, defending, argued that the error made by Mr Noonan in crossing the road amounted to a momentary inadvertence which more properly fell into the category of careless driving.

The jury took just over half an hour to acquit Mr Noonan of the dangerous driving causing death charge.

Imposing sentence, Judge Ó Donnabháin said that it was notable that there were no aggravating factors such as drink, speed or a defective vehicle involved.