Re: Autumn 2015 | Page 62

Fading Light A Local Authority has been urged by a Coroner to review its policy of switching off street lights in the middle of the night to save money, after he concluded that it had contributed to a woman’s death in September 2014. Cheryl Richards, 31, was returning home at about 2 o’clock in the morning with her partner after going to a party. They were walking along a more rural part of the A361 in Wiltshire, which was unlit and did not have a pavement. The road was in complete darkness, as Wiltshire County Council had decided three years earlier amid austerity cuts, to switch off the street lights from midnight to 5.30am to save £300,000 a year. Neither was wearing any reflective clothing. Miss Richards was hit by a car and died from head injuries. At the inquest in May 2015, her partner described how they both had been drinking but neither was drunk. He thought that it was safe to walk home along the grass verge. Witnesses confirmed that they had seen the couple walking along the side of the road. On several occasions, Miss Richards had also been seen walking in the middle of the road, although there was no apparent intention to have caused herself harm. The inquest heard that the car’s driver had also been drinking. He initially left the scene of the accident but then returned before handing himself in to the Police. In England and Wales, the alcohol limit for drivers is 35 microgrammes per 100 millilitres of breath; 80 milligrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood; or 107 milligrammes per 100 millilitres of urine. When the driver was eventually breathalyzed, he was found to have 38 microgrammes of alcohol in his breath. 60 However, further tests showed that at the time of the crash, he was likely to have been at 34 milligrams, being just under the limit. A toxicology report showed that Miss Richards had 139 milligrams of alcohol in her system. Accident Investigators assessed that the driver would only have been able to see Miss Richards at 25m, if he were driving with dimmed headlights. At that distance, anyone driving at the relevant speed limit would have been faced with an inevitable collision due to her position in the road, which left a vehicle with insufficient time to avoid her. The Coroner ruled that given the lack of street lighting and that Miss Richards was not wearing any reflective clothing, it would have been impossible for the driver, or any others driving on that road, to have avoided her. He added that it was not clear whether the driver’s attention and reactions were or were not decreased by the level of alcohol in his system. However, the Coroner did conclude that the lack of street lighting was one of the main factors in her death. This case follows a previous inquest in Warwickshire in December 2012, where a Coroner concluded that the switching off of street lighting as a costs saving measure contributed to the death of a student. More details can be found at: Inquests Impact of Austerity Cuts Data published in December 2014, suggested that about three quarters of councils are either dimming their street lights or switching them off completely to save money. There has been an eight fold increase in the number of street lights being turned off since 2010. Although Councils may be saving hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in electricity bills, Police data published in 2014 showed that night time road deaths had increased by 39% since 2009 when lights were switched off. Serious injuries were up by 27% and minor injuries by 19%. A total of 324 more people were killed or injured after dark on the roads over this period, compared with a general downward trend in road casualties. As a result of such a finding at an inquest, a family could be advised to seek compensation against a local authority. If they were able to establish negligence against that authority stemming from its decision to turn off street lighting, then they and, or their insurer, could be faced with having to pay a substantial damages award, which could exceed the annual sums being saved in electricity. It would be advisable for local authorities to consider the conclusions of this inquest against their current street lighting policies and weigh up the risks and costs benefits involved. By Michael Mulcare