No-one can complain that the wheels of justice turn too quickly.
- On 14 March 2011 Mrs Emma De Silva who was pushing her 19 day old daughter Eloise in a pram on the footpath along the Princess Highway at St Peters when she was run down by a car.
- In June 2012 the evidence was heard.
- In November 2012 the driver Bruce Wayland was found guilty of negligent driving causing grievous bodily harm.
On 17 February Magistrate Graeme Curran disqualified Bryce Wayland from driving for 15 months and sentenced him to all of 50 hours of community service see
SMH article
Magistrate Curran said he accepted Wayland's claim that his pedal had become jammed, but he had plenty of time to stop before the accident if he used the brakes instead of trying to free the accelerator.
"Behaving as a reasonably prudent driver, he should have applied the brakes," he said.
Magistrate Curran said the evidence showed Wayland was about 70m from the crash site when his pedal got stuck and would have been able to stop the car in around half that distance.
15 months disqualification seems like a long time, unless you understand that the penalties for "negligent driving causing grievous bodily harm" are, for a first offence, a minimum disqualification of 12 months, there is no maximum disqualification period and the disqualification in the absence of a specific court order is 3 years.
Mrs De Silva did not get off so lightly - she was in a coma for two months, a further year at Royal Rehabilitation Hospital in Ryde, has brain damage and can no longer walk without assistance.