WHAKATANE - One of the country's best qualified driving instructors has lost his licence for five years after causing a fatal accident.
Adrian Joseph Roberts, aged 33, a Hamilton company director, appeared for sentencing before Judge Eric Anderson in the Whakatane District Court yesterday on a charge of careless use causing death and five counts of careless use causing injury.
He had changed his plea to guilty at an earlier hearing after the charges were reduced from dangerous driving.
Roberts was also sentenced to six months' periodic detention, fined a total of $6000 (to go to the crash survivors), $130 court costs on each of the six charges, and ordered to pay a total of $1800 reparation.
The court heard how he was returning to Hamilton in his BMW with his fiancee from a diving trip when a passing manoeuvre caused a horrific accident on the Matata Straight in February last year.
A Gisborne woman, Dianne Fay Thomas, was killed and five other people injured, some severely.
Roberts' lawyer, Philip Morgan, said his client had had an unparalleled career in road safety "which has an awful irony in the matter now before the court."
With his credibility in the industry destroyed, Roberts had turned to a new career, starting a small info-technology company.
For 13 years, he had used a Swedish road safety tool, imported by his father, to train drivers in Australia and New Zealand. It was a sophisticated clip-on attachment to an ordinary car which simulated extreme conditions.
Roberts taught police, fire, ambulance, Army and corporate sector personnel as well as thousands of individuals and he had trained 76 driving instructors.
He was a Land Transport Safety Authority-approved driver assessor and had written courses on driver safety and training.
On February 8, 1998, Roberts came through the Matata railway underpass on to a straight 500m stretch of road in his 1993 leased two-seater BMW.
He passed two cars ahead of him and thought the way was clear to overtake a four-wheel-drive vehicle.
Believing there was no gap to pull back into, he continued the passing manoeuvre.
The oncoming driver, Gail Gisby, pulled left to avoid Roberts, putting half her vehicle on the road shoulder and losing control.
She slid across the carriageway into the car containing four members of the Strulik family from North Shore, who were all hurt.
Mrs Gisby suffered serious injuries and Dianne Thomas, her passenger, died.
Roberts saw the appalling aftermath from his rear-vision mirror and went back to the scene, Mr Morgan said.
Mr Morgan, in mitigation submissions, acknowledged the suffering and anger of the victims and publicly expressed his client's deep regret and sorrow.
Judge Anderson said whatever sentence was handed down would not satisfy everyone.
He described Roberts' degree of carelessness as "moderate to serious."
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