Lorry driver given ten months in jail for deaths of two men on smart motorway
Video report by ITV News Correspondent Stacey Foster
A lorry driver has been given to ten months in jail and disqualified for 4 years for causing the deaths of two men on smart motorway.
Jason Mercer, 44, and Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, died when a lorry ploughed into their stationary vehicles on a stretch of smart motorway on the M1 near Sheffield on June 7 2019.
Prezemyslaw Zbigniew Szuba, 40, admitted two counts of causing death by driving without due care and attention when he appeared at Sheffield Magistrates' Court last month.
Claire Mercer, Mr Mercer’s wife, has mounted a prominent campaign against smart motorways since her husband's death.
She says he would not have died if there had been a hard shoulder.
After Szuba last appeared in court, Mrs Mercer said she will use her victim personal statement to the crown court to argue that the trucker should be spared jail.
The magistrates’ court heard how Mr Mercer, from Rotherham, and Mr Murgeanu, from Mansfield, had been involved in a "minor bump" on the northbound carriageway of the M1, between junctions 34 and 35, and had stopped in the slow lane.
Szuba’s Mercedes HGV "ploughed into both vehicles," the court heard.
Prosecutors said the lorry was not speeding and there was no suggestion that the defendant had been drinking or was on drugs.
Nicola Hale, defending, said her client had only just joined the motorway at junction 34 and it was only for a matter of seconds that the (stationary) vehicles were visible".
She said the evidence in the case showed Szuba was driving "normally" and well within the speed limit just before the crash.
During the sentencing, Judge Jeremy Richardson QC said it was not his role to conduct a public inquiry into the controversial highways, but said: "A hard shoulder strikes me as analogous to the emergency doors on an aeroplane or lifeboats on ships.
"One never hopes ever to use them, and most of the time you never do. But they're there."
Speaking outside court, widow Claire Mercer said: "We don't believe the correct person is taking responsibility for this massive detrimental effect on ours and so many other people's lives.
"The events of June 7 2019 would not have taken place if there had been a hard shoulder and Highways England was run with the correct priorities in mind - not concentrating on who wins the next big contract.
"An agenda genuinely concerned with avoiding future deaths is not served by a pretend review and 18 compromises that wouldn't have saved any of 40-plus people killed by smart motorways or by jailing the wrong person."