A motorist has been sentenced to three years and nine months in prison after hitting a cyclist, leaving the victim with such serious injuries that he later lost his leg, before driving off and selling their car to cover up their role in the shocking crash.
27-year-old Savannah Roberts was driving on Penarth Road in Cardiff at around 2.25am in the early hours of Friday 5 August 2022, when she struck the cyclist from behind at speed.
Following the collision, Roberts initially stopped and returned to the victim, before quickly driving off, leaving the cyclist lying stricken on the roadside begging for help.
The cyclist was taken to the University Hospital of Wales and later transferred to Morriston Hospital in Swansea, where he had to have a leg amputated due to the extent of the injuries sustained in the crash.
Savannah Roberts (South Wales Police)
According to South Wales Police, Roberts quickly sold her car in the days after the crash in an attempt to cover up any link between her and the incident.
However, after extensive enquiries and forensic work, the car was eventually connected to the 27-year-old, who was arrested after officers examining CCTV footage from the area spotted her driving through a red light on the same night.
South Wales Police have also released footage which shows Roberts driving towards Penarth Road shortly before the collision, as well as the moments leading up to the shocking crash, in which the 27-year-old can be seen approaching the cyclist from behind at speed.
Body cam footage from Roberts’ arrest also shows the 27-year-old arguing with police officers. During her subsequent questioning by police, she replied “no comment” to all questions, but later admitted the offences in court.
On Thursday 5 September, Roberts was sentenced at Cardiff Crown Court to three years and nine months in prison for causing serious injury by careless driving and perverting the course of justice.
This latest sentencing of a driver who left a cyclist with permanent serious injuries comes in the same month a lorry driver who caused “irreversible” injuries to a cyclist he struck while overtaking directly towards two oncoming HGVs, in a manoeuvre described as a “terrible miscalculation” by his barrister, was handed a four-month prison sentence suspended for two years and banned from driving for 12 months.
Last week in Bradford Crown Court, a witness to the collision – a brief clip of which, filmed by the cyclist’s rear-facing camera, was shown to the court – said that 66-year-old lorry driver James Templeton was not giving the cyclist, who was wearing high-visibility clothing, “enough room” as he attempted to overtake him.
The witness then said that they saw the man’s bike “fire off” into the bushes, as he rolled down the road following the collision.
After “hearing a bang”, Templeton stopped his lorry and later told another witness that he had “just clipped a cyclist”. The 66-year-old also told police that two other lorry drivers were approaching in the opposite lane at the time, and that he assumed that had passed the cyclist.
The cyclist suffered several serious injuries in the collision, including damage to his spinal cord, a fractured pelvis, a skull fracture, several broken ribs, and a collapsed lung, and spent the next six months undergoing treatment in hospital. The court heard that he now requires a wheelchair to go out and is in “constant pain”, with the judge telling Templeton that “his and wife’s lives will never be the same again”.
Templeton admitted causing serious injury by careless driving and was handed a four-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, a reduced sentence the judge attributed to his guilty plea and “genuine remorse”, and disqualified from driving for a year.