Man avoids jail after seriously injuring girlfriend in road accident

3 May 2017

A DOWNPATRICK man has been spared prison after admitting causing grievous bodily injury to his girlfriend by dangerous driving.

Twenty year-old Ryan Mason, of The Meadows, was given 240 hours’ community service and a three-year driving ban when he appeared in Downpatrick Crown Court on Friday.

The court, sitting in Belfast, heard that Mason, was driving his Renault Clio car when the crash happened on the Drumnaconagher Road outside Downpatrick on May 27, 2014.

Prosecution lawyer, Jim Johnston, told the court that at the time 17 year-old Mason was a restricted R-plate driver and was limited to a speed of 45 mph having only passed his driving test a week earlier.

His then girlfriend was a front a seat passenger and two other friends were in the rear seat when he “lost control’’ of the vehicle on the narrow country road.

One rear seat passenger later told police that Mason was going “a wee bit quick for that type of road’’ which had a number of dips and crests in the road.

Judge Piers Grant heard that after losing control, the Clio car first hurtled into a tree impacting on the passenger side, went into a reverse tail spin and careered into a stone wall on the passenger side again.

The court was told that Mason’s girlfriend took the full force of the crash and was rushed by ambulance to the intensive care unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast in a critical condition.

Mr Johnston said the teenager spent 16 days receiving treatment for a number of severe injuries, including a depressed fracture to the right side of her head.

A forensic engineer examined both the scene of the crash and also the Clio car and found the speedometer was “stuck at 60 mph’’, even though Mason initially claimed to police he was driving at 45-50 mph.

In his report, the engineer said he travelled the same road and felt it was only safe to be driven at 40 mph given the limited view because of the hidden dips.

On examination of the car, he found a number of the tyres were under inflated but couldn’t say if this was caused as a result of crash.

“At a subsequent police interview, the defendant did accept that he was doing 60 mph on the day in question,’’ said Mr Johnston.

“He did express remorse for his poor driving which had caused the accident.’’

The court heard that as a result of the crash, his injured girlfriend lost two years of her education and had to give up an agricultural course at Greenmount College.

The couple are no longer together and she has now made an almost full recovery, the judge was told, and was now studying agriculture at a university in the north of England.

David McDowell QC, defending, said Mason had “shown a great deal of remorse and is fully aware of the consequences of what he has done’’.

He added: “It is pleasing that relations between the two families are as reasonable as can be expected and there is no animosity from the girl’s family to Mr Mason.

“Mr Mason is not a tearaway who has finally got his comeuppance. He is somebody who comes from a good family and who has a made colossal mistake’’.

Judge Piers Grant said it was clear that at the time Mason was “driving at an excessive speed for this type of road and for his experience’’ as a recently qualified driver.

“If there is one message to go out of this court today is that young people need to slow down on the roads. People need to control their speed.’’

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