A 62-year-old man from Muntendam was sentenced to 200 hours of community service for causing a serious accident on April 23, 2020 in De Groeve. The judge also imposed a two-year driving ban on him, of which one year was conditional.
The motorist from Muntendam turned at the end of the afternoon to drive into a parking lot of a Chinese restaurant. The man overlooked two cyclists when turning. One of the cyclists hit the back of his head hard and suffered a brain injury.
The officers found a motorist who spoke with a double tongue. According to the breath test, the man had drunk three times more than the legal limit. He couldn’t see the cyclists because of the low sun. There is no indication that the man was indeed blinded by the sun. The victim was out of action for a year as a doctor in training.
The Muntendammer drove very inattentive and careless, the judge said. A three-month prison sentence would have been appropriate, she said. The personal circumstances and the aging of the case resulted in a more lenient sentence.