Advertisement

UK court cuts jail term of fatal crash Frenchman

AFP
AFP - [email protected]
UK court cuts jail term of fatal crash Frenchman

British judges on Friday halved the jail term handed to a Frenchman who caused a fatal crash by driving on the wrong side of the road, because he was unused to Britain's rules of the road, newspaper reports said.

Advertisement

Alexis Sebastien Fleury, 25, performed a U-turn while driving to see his English girlfriend in August 2012 but failed to return to the correct side of the road and crashed head-on with another car, killing the driver.

Fleury was convicted earlier this year of causing the death by careless driving of David Crane, a 62-year-old father of two children, and jailed for
18 months.

But appeal court judges in London halved this term to nine months, arguing that Fleury, from Orleans, south of Paris, should not have been sentenced as
if he were an Englishman used to driving on the left.

"As a Frenchman, used to driving on the right hand side of the road, he remained on the right hand side of the road after his U-turn," the judges
ruled, according to the reports in The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph newspapers.

They added: "He did a U-turn in the dark in England and, for moments or minutes, forgot that he was not driving in France.

"The culpability of a British driver in the same circumstances would have been very high indeed. For somebody from France, the culpability must be reduced."

Fleury is now likely to be released next week, the reports said.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also