Court told of previous accidents at site of fatal motorbike crash

Airman first class Mikayla Hayes, 25, pulled out of a side road across the path of Matthew Day, 33, as he travelled south along the A10 at Southery in Norfolk on August 26 last year. The father-of-one’s Yamaha motorbike struck her Honda Accord and he died of his injuries later that day.

Airman first class Mikayla Hayes, left, arrives at Norwich Crown Court, Norfolk, where the US servicewoman denies causing the death of a motorcyclist (Joe Giddens/PA)

Hayes had been turning right, towards her home in Downham Market, as she travelled back from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk where she worked. She denies causing Mr Day’s death by careless driving.

Professor Alex Stedmon, an independent road safety consultant called as an expert witness by the defence, told Norwich Crown Court: “For want of a better expression, it appears to be a hotspot or a blackspot for accidents.” The court was told, in agreed facts between prosecution and defence, that there had been collisions at the site in 2016, 2017, 2019 and early 2023 in addition to the fatal crash in 2022. “Looking at the statistics altogether we’ve got five collisions documented in the records,” Prof Stedmon said.

“They seem to fit with what I call a working definition of a cluster site.” He said he defined this as where there were “at least four personal injury incidents within a three-year period within a 100-metre diameter”. Under cross-examination from prosecutor Rachel Scott, he accepted that to meet this definition he was working on the number of people injured, and not the number of incidents.

Ms Scott said that using this definition, a single incident at the site on October 7 2016 which resulted in injuries to five people would make it a “cluster site”. Prof Stedmon described the junction as “complex”, adding: “It’s a complex site and the complexity will add demands to road users at that site.” In an agreed fact, read by Ms Scott, jurors were told that there is a “recorded phenomenon of looked but failed to see”.

“In the specialist area of collision investigation there is a recorded phenomenon of looked but failed to see,” she said. She added this is also referred to as “sorry mate, I didn’t see you”. “The phenomenon doesn’t necessarily imply a failure to look adequately or a lapse in concentration,” said Ms Scott.

The trial continues.