Ok, so we all get it sometimes… Someone cuts you up on a roundabout, or pulls out in front of you from a side road; and you respond with a short expletive and a bash of the horn. But when road rage turns fatal, it’s an altogether different, and tragic, story. I’ve heard of some appalling instances of road rage before, but this story really is such a tragedy:
According to one BBC report, a man from a notorious Glasgow crime family has admitted killing a man in an act of road rage terrible road rage (source).
Twenty-eight year old Paul Lyons (28) rammed Mark Fleeman’s van on the M74 in an act of drink and drugs fuelled road rage, at a time when Lyons was serving a driving ban! Tragically, Mr Freeman suffered fatal injuries after his vehicle was overturned and taken off the road during the incident, just seconds after a desperate 999 call was made to police with the operator allegedly hearing the impact.
Reportedly he was originally charged with murder, however he has pleaded guilty to culpable homicide and attempting to defeat the ends of justice, after he fled to Spain and was picked up by Spanish Police, and accordingly extradited back to the UK. He has also admitted to injuring the passenger, 17 year old Lee Allsup, to “permanent impairment” and to dangerous driving.
Speaking after the hearing at the High Court in Glasgow, district procurator fiscal for Hamilton Jennifer Harrower said: “Paul Lyons used his van as a weapon, it may not have been a knife or a gun but nevertheless it had the same lethal consequences culminating in the death of an innocent man.”
According to the report, Lyons repeatedly attempted to purposefully collide with Mr Freeman’s van on the road at speeds of more than 70mph. People have apparently been “naturally outraged” at the incident and the circumstances of this tragic road incident. Certainly a terrible and tragic instance of road rage at its worse.
All drivers know their duty of care to other road users, and of course failing in this duty of care through negligence leaves the driver liable for and damages and suffering. This of course is an incident of purposeful violence as oppose to negligence, and has led to the tragic death of one man and the second with serious life impairing injuries.
