1/3 Photo: Iwan van Dun/SQ Vision.
One moment of inattention became a 67-year-old woman from Dongen. A truck driver overlooked her, she ended up under the wheels and died on the spot. The truck driver had lost her for a moment and had driven over her. Two hundred hours of community service was demanded in the court in Breda on Tuesday.
Driver Pierre G. (55) from Cadier in Limburg and Keer was reported in court on Tuesday. He often thinks back to that 11th September 2023, when he rode with his big DAF truck with a trailer on the Wendelnesseweg in Sprang-Capelle.
The 67-year-old woman from Dongen also cycled there with her sister and sister-in-law. Pierre was still behind the women with a road narrowing on a bridge. What happened afterwards is a lot more unclear.
Pierre wanted to give some gas and tried to catch up with the women. Somehow he missed that he had not passed the 67-year-old woman. She was still driving for him and when he had to go to the right, because an oncoming car arrived on the narrow road, he drove over the woman. Another woman could quickly drive into the roadside next to the truck and prevent an accident, otherwise a dead person would have fallen.
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Pierre G. was therefore not aware of cycling women, and the public prosecutor thought that was very bad for a professional driver. Of course he did not intend to drive someone to death, but he should certainly have paid more attention.
G. made various explanations on places and on the desk. And Tuesday, during the session, another reading came. Normally cyclists turn right onto the bridge to the Parallelweg and therefore do not come to the road at all where the collision took place.
But that road was closed and so the women cycled further across the Wendelnesseweg-Oost with all its consequences. Pierre still has a lot of problems with it: “I should have just left behind it, then it would not have happened,” he said sobbing to court. He doesn’t get the image of the woman under his truck from his retina.
The public prosecutor saw the grief at Pierre G. too. He demanded a two hundred hours of community service and a conditional driving cancellation for a year. Pierre G. needs his driver’s license for his work as a truck driver, the officer saw. But if G. goes wrong again in the next two years, he will lose his driver’s license in terms of the judiciary.
The court will rule on this case on 14 October.
