Driver is jailed for fatal A13 Pitsea Flyover crash
Joshua Claydon, 20, of Orrmo Road, Canvey, was jailed on Monday (October 6), for six years and three months. He crashed while driving at 81mph on the London-bound A13, trying to undertake a white transit van on the Pitsea flyover. His friend Ellie Jo Evers was pronounced dead at the scene.
A male passenger was left permanently paralysed from the waist down. "The life I had planned doesn't exist anymore," he wrote in a statement to sentencing judge Samantha Cohen. "I have no privacy in my own home." The young man was left incontinent and wheelchair-bound, requiring four carer visits per day.
"It's taken away my independence, my career and the future I was building," he wrote. Judge Cohen found he had suffered "an unimaginable loss of privacy". 
Claydon was sentenced at Southend Crown Court, in a courtroom packed with dozens of friends and family of his victims. The crash occurred at around 2pm on July 1, 2023, as Claydon was driving to a music festival, said prosecutor Mitchell Cohen. Claydon had five people, including himself, in his black Ford KA, which was only designed for four occupants.
Only one of the five was wearing a seatbelt and the black box installed as part of Claydon's insurance policy had been unplugged the previous night. After "a prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of dangerous driving," said Mr Cohen, Claydon suddenly veered left to get in front of the van. He "lost control, collided with a crash barrier on the near side and rebounded into the road, spinning, before coming to a stop."
Three people, including Claydon, were flung from the vehicle onto the carriage way. Ellie, 18, from Benfleet, suffered fatal head injuries. The car's engine block flew out and landed on the Basildon exit slip road.
Other parts of the car rained down onto parked vehicles in the Tesco car park below, with one wheel smashing through a car roof and landing in the driver's seat. Fortunately, said Mr Cohen, they were unoccupied at the time. Injuries suffered by the passengers included lacerations, broken bones, organ damage and permanent scarring.
One had to be resuscitated at the roadside. Claydon himself was airlifted to hospital with life-threatening injuries and had to be put on a ventilator. His passengers described him as a "fast and reckless" driver, "erratically" pulling in and out of traffic, speeding up and then "skidding" to a halt.
Questioned by police, he answered "no comment" to all questions but gave a prepared statement in which he denied driving dangerously or being responsible for the injuries suffered by his passengers. 
"I am truly sorry," his second prepared statement said. "There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about this." But when he was eventually charged 20 months after the incident, he pleaded guilty at the first opportunity to one charge of causing death by dangerous driving and three of causing serious injury by dangerous driving. Defence barrister Christopher Martin said his client had no previous convictions and, until the accident, a clean driving licence.
He had passed his driving test eight months before the crash. "The guilt and remorse Mr Claydon has carried with him since this incident will remain with him for life," he said. Character references described his behaviour on the day as "out of character", describing him as a kind and considerate person.
Judge Cohen said Claydon's "desire to show off" had left Ellie's family "trying to make sense of a senseless loss." "It is plain to me that you were driving at very dangerous speeds for your small, old and overloaded car," she said. "You were enjoying the thrill and kudos...
You did not give a moment's thought to what might happen."
But, she accepted, he had been "irrevocably changed" by the incident and demonstrated "genuine and heartfelt remorse".