AT 70mph ON M90, SHE SENT TEXT ..THIS WAS THE RESULT; Exclusive Driver hit car with young kids.Byline: By Jack Mathieson A WOMAN driver was text messaging Sending short messages to a smartphone, pager, PDA or other handheld device. Text messaging implies sending short messages generally no more than a couple of hundred characters in length. when she smashed into a car carrying two young children at 70mph. Deborah Sillar caused Paul and ClaireMurray's Volvo to roll over three times before crashing upside down on a hard shoulder. Sillar's car flipped and landed beside the central reservation central reservation Noun Brit & NZ the strip that separates the two sides of a motorway or dual carriageway central reservation n (BRIT) (AUT) → mediana . Amazingly, the couple escaped with cuts and bruises. But Paul insisted they were lucky to be alive. Bar worker Sillar, 20, was yesterday banned from the roads for 18 months and fined pounds 750 for dangerous driving. Last night, Paul said: "Had it not been for luck and the fact I was driving a Volvo, we would be dead - all because she wanted to send a text." Sillar, who also escaped serious injury, told Dunfermline Sheriff Court she could remember little about the lead up to the accident on the M90 near Kelty in Fife. But another motorist said he saw her holding a flip-top phone at arm's length half a mile from the crash scene. Sillar's phone records showed she sent a text and received one around the time of the accident last September. Sheriff Craig McSherry found Sillar, of Dunfermline, Fife, guilty and told her: "I am satisfied the evidence points to you having used your phone while driving. "We have evidence from you that the speed was 70mph." He added: "It is extremely fortunate that severe injury or even worse was not caused." The couple had been heading home to Dunfermline after a day in Perth when Sillar's Metro veered across the road and hit them. After the crash, Paul was able to pass the children - a boy aged six and a girl of three - out of the car to helpers before getting his wife out and climbing out himself. Paul said the impact seemed to go on forever and said the accident is haunting them. He said: "The memories are very vivid. It was quite surreal sur·re·al adj. 1. Having qualities attributed to or associated with surrealism: "Even with most facilities shut down ... and we were wondering when it was going to end." He added: "I don't want to sound self-righteous because she is just young, but to text while driving is just plain daft. "She was on a collision course collision course n. A course, as of moving objects or opposing philosophies, that will end in a collision or conflict if left unchanged: two planes on a collision course; dissidents on a collision course with the regime. from the moment she started to veer across the carriageway carriageway Noun 1. Brit the part of a road along which traffic passes in one direction: the westbound carriageway of the M4 2. and she did nothing to correct it. That suggests to me she did not have her eyes on the road. "The f ront windscreen was ruptured but did not come in, but the back windows were smashed. "I got cuts where I passed the children out of the back windows between bits of broken glass. "I have managed to put it behind me, but my wife is no longer a confident driver." Depute de·pute tr.v. de·put·ed, de·put·ing, de·putes 1. To appoint or authorize as an agent or a representative. 2. To assign (authority or duties) to another; delegate. fiscal Azrah Yousaf asked Sillar if she had been texting. She said: "I could have been receiving a message." The fiscal asked: "Could you have replied?" Sillar replied: "Possibly, possibly not." Sillar, who was ordered to re-sit her test, refused to comment as she left court. CAPTION(S): DANGER: Sillar, leaving court. Right, her overturned car and, far right, the Volvo |
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