Sleepy Suffolk driver jailed for causing serious crash
Barry Goody has been jailed after he fell asleep at the wheel, causing a crash which left a man with life changing injuries
A driver from Suffolk who fell asleep at the wheel has been jailed for causing a collision that left another man with life-changing injuries.
Barry Goody’s van collided with the back of the victim’s Ford Fiesta, which had been driving slowly in a queue of heavy traffic on the southbound A12 in Langham. The Fiesta was pushed to the side of the road, and Goody’s van continued into the back of an Audi TT, which was then pushed into a lorry.
The 22-year-old Fiesta driver was airlifted to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge with multiple serious injuries and underwent surgery for damage to his skull. He was placed an induced coma and was in hospital for ten weeks, but had to be re-admitted for surgery to fit a cerebral shunt. He is still undergoing treatment for his life-changing injuries.
The Audi driver was also injured but fortunately was not seriously hurt. The lorry driver was uninjured.
Goody, 41, of New House in Falkenham, Suffolk, was arrested at the scene of the collision on 10 February this year. Following an investigation, he was charged with causing serious injury by dangerous driving.
He admitted the offence at Chelmsford Crown Court on 8 October and was sentenced on 18 November to 18 months imprisonment. He was banned from driving for three years and three months and must then take an extended re-test. The court heard Goody had fallen asleep momentarily just before the collision.
The victim, who is from Clacton, said:
“I left work as normal on 10 February and was driving home, when I stopped in a line of traffic as a lorry had overturned on the A12. The next thing I remember was waking up in Addenbrooke’s Hospital several weeks later attached to machines, unable to talk because I had a tracheotomy tube in my throat as I could not breathe for myself."