‘Another day, another derisory sentence for killing a cyclist’
Plus, a new public artwork is unveiled in Firth Park
Good afternoon readers — and welcome to our Monday briefing.
Tragedies on our roads are an all too common part of modern life. Last week saw the culmination of two cases at Sheffield Crown Court where defendants stood accused of killing cyclists through either dangerous or careless driving. In both cases, despite the judge having the option of sending the offenders to prison, the drivers instead received suspended prison sentences, meaning they won’t automatically serve prison time. The sentences have led some in the Sheffield cycling community to question whether our courts are taking these offences seriously enough. That’s our big story today.
As well as that, a new public artwork is unveiled in Firth Park and a nine-person band from Pakistan visits Attercliffe.
Catch up and coming up
For our weekend read, Daniel Dylan Wray reported on the world premiere of Strike: An Uncivil War, a documentary about the Battle of Orgreave, released to coincide with its 40th anniversary. Wray caught up with its director Daniel Gordon on the same day it was announced that the film had won the Sheffield Doc/Fest Audience Award. “I'm buzzing from it,” Gordon told him. “Not so much for me, but because this is going to mean so much to the families [of miners].” You can read that piece here.
Last week, we sent out two great newsletters to our 2,210 paying members. For the first, Victoria headed to Rotherham, one of only two constituencies in the UK where the Tories aren’t running, to ask whether this fact leaves the door open for a Reform UK victory. In the second, Dan reported on a 21-year-old Sheffield Wednesday fan who was recently banned from matches for a racist gesture, who is nonetheless still welcome in the Yorkshire Cricket Southern Premier League. You can read an excerpt of that piece below.
The decision over how to respond to Rabjohn’s conviction is a tightrope walk. Would banning the player from cricket as well as football for a long period actually help? Should the cricket clubs, leagues and governing bodies be responsible for things that happen at a football ground? On the other hand, following the Azeem Rafiq scandal, can a sport really be seen to be turning a blind eye to a convicted racist in its midst? “You don’t want the sport to just completely cast people out,” says the teammate, “but just being made to do a Zoom call isn’t really any punishment.”
This week we’ll send out two more, including one from Dan about how Sheffield’s volunteer-run libraries have proved to be an unlikely austerity success story and, of course, our in-depth coverage of the results of the general election. To help fund a new way of doing journalism funded by paying members rather than clickbait, please consider subscribing if you haven’t already. It costs just £1.71 a week or 24p a day if you pay for 12 months up front (£89).
Editor’s note: Know any fantastic journalists in Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow? If so, please remind them they’ve only got until the end of this week to apply for a job at one of our sister publications. We’re looking for staff writers for the Liverpool Post, the Birmingham Dispatch and a new publication we’re planning to launch this year in Glasgow, while in Manchester we’re keen to find a new assistant editor. Find out more on the Mill Media Co website here.
The big picture: A new leaf of life 🍃
Last Friday, a new public artwork was unveiled in Firth Park, turning the remains of a tree lost to disease into a stunning piece by award-winning chainsaw artist Shane Green. Green says he took a lot of input from local residents while working on the piece, particularly children from nearby Hinde House Primary School, who were invited to the launch. Photo by Laure Divisia.
This week’s weather 🌦
Our weather forecast comes from dedicated Sheffield weather service Steel City Skies, who say low pressure to the northwest brings changeable and rather cool conditions for the week ahead as we introduce July.
Monday 🌦 Early brightness soon gives way to thicker clouds and outbreaks of rain. Dull, damp and breezy thereafter from the west, with highs of 17°C.
Tuesday 🌦 A cool northwesterly breeze introduces bright spells and one or two afternoon showers. Some staying dry with highs of 18°C.
Wednesday 🌦 More general rain, particularly early on, clearing to showers later with freshening southwesterly winds. Highs of around 18°C.
Thursday 🌦 A blustery day from the west with sunny spells and another scattering of showers, some heavy. Highs again close to 18°C, a tad below average.
Friday 🌦 A good deal of dry weather possible, but the threat of showers coming down from the northwest will still be present. Breezy, with highs of 18°C.
Outlook: Not a lot of change into the weekend with decent spells of dry and bright weather interspersed with a few showers, too. Temperatures still a little below the norm.
To see the full forecast and keep up to date with any changes to the outlook, follow Steel City Skies on Facebook.
The big story: ‘Another day, another derisory sentence for killing a cyclist’
Top line: Two South Yorkshire drivers have been spared jail after killing cyclists. Are the courts still being too lenient on people whose careless or dangerous driving kills?
Last week saw the conclusion of two traumatic court cases involving the deaths of cyclists. Dr Adrian Lane, a 58-year-old Sheffield IT specialist, was killed in September 2022 when driver Gillian Dungworth turned into his path on Ringinglow Road. And Glyn Straw, 54, was killed on Pleasley Road in Rotherham in September 2023, when driver James Wardle failed to see him and crashed into his bike from the rear.
At her sentencing on Friday, the court heard how Gillian Dungworth, a 40-year-old nurse from Rotherham, was following her sat nav to get to her destination but should still have been able to see Adrian Lane. She pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and was sentenced to two years in prison, suspended for two years. She was also banned from driving for five years.
At James Wardle’s sentencing, also on Friday, it was revealed that the 83-year-old failed a roadside sight test, in which he was unable to read a car registration at 20 metres. He also had degenerative eyesight problems, although this wasn't diagnosed at the time of the crash. Wardle pleaded guilty to careless driving and was sentenced to five months imprisonment, suspended for 18 months.
Summing up, Judge Jeremy Richardson KC said Dungworth was "filled with genuine remorse". He described her as a "respectable" woman who had driven her car "very badly for a few seconds". The court also heard that Louise Lane, Mr Lane's former partner and mother to their children, had written to the Crown Prosecution Service saying the family felt it was a "tragic accident". The family added they believed no one was to blame for the crash and they had "no bad feelings or malice towards the driver of the car".
However, some in the Sheffield cycling community voiced their frustration at the sentences. “My son’s friend is fatherless forever and she got two years suspended,” wrote one prominent Sheffield cyclist on Twitter of the Lane verdict. “Another day, another derisory sentence for killing a cyclist,” wrote the same person about the Straw case. “Should never have been on the road if he couldn't bloody SEE!” However, others writing on the Cycle Sheffield Facebook page felt lengthier driving bans were better than custodial sentences. “Driving is a privilege not a right,” wrote one.
The maximum sentence for causing death by dangerous driving is life imprisonment (it was increased from 14 years in 2022) while the maximum sentence for causing death by careless driving is five years (if under the influence this can be 14 years).
In the year ending June 2023, 93% of offenders convicted of causing death by dangerous driving were sentenced to immediate custody. For those convicted of causing death by careless or inconsiderate driving, this figure drops to 22%.
Our take: Whether sending either of the defendants immediately to prison would have achieved anything is debatable. There are always mitigating factors in court and sentencing is best left to judges who have followed the whole case and know the law inside out. But it sometimes feels as if the justice system — and society in general — doesn’t acknowledge that car drivers are in charge of something that could potentially be, and far too often is, a deadly weapon. If anything at all were to come out of these terrible twin tragedies, a greater understanding of how vulnerable cyclists still are on our roads would be a fitting legacy to both men.
In the aftermath of Adrian Lane’s death, his friends and family set up The Lane Campaign to call for the junction where he died to be made safer for cyclists. To find out more click here.
The Weekly Whitworth ✍️
Cartoonist James Whitworth with his take on our weekend read about the Battle of Orgreave.
Our media picks
Is Sheffield Britain’s most cutting-edge city? 📈 As we’ve noted before, many of our local politicians are consumed by the idea that Sheffield is “a city on the up,” long overshadowed by Manchester and Leeds but finally about to pull ahead of the pack. That’s also the central argument of this BBC feature — one published in September 2006. Almost 20 years on, it’s interesting to look back and see what has materialised, such as the “elegant super-conservatory” then being built near the Town Hall, and what hasn’t, such as the planned transformation of disused cooling towers at Meadowhall into giant artworks. Martyn Ware, founder of Human League, told the BBC back then that “Sheffield's tactic now is to repopulate the city centre,” a problem we’re still wrestling with to this day.
100 fastest-growing companies in Britain 2024 revealed 💸 The Sunday Times has published its annual list of the UK’s fastest-growing companies and a Sheffield steel company is 37th on the list! International Energy Products, which provides steel and engineering services to energy companies across the world, was founded in 2017 by 36-year-old Emma Parkinson. Parkinson told the Sunday Times she’s disappointed to see so few women holding senior roles in her industry. “I am one of very few in this industry, and I’m also one of the youngest.”
Curbs on expert cross-examination could lead to wrongful removals, family silks warn 🏥 A little-known pilot taking place at Sheffield Children’s Hospital could lead to innocent parents having their children taken away, senior family lawyers warn. Under the pilot, young children with head injuries that could be the result of abuse will be seen by a new multidisciplinary hub, in the hopes of escalating concerns as fast as possible. What worries some lawyers is whether the hub’s experts will be available for cross examination in court and the possibility that their evidence will replace the use of independent experts. Local solicitor Vince Beckworth, of Banner Jones Solicitors, told The Tribune that any lawyer specialising in child protection will have seen cases where evidence from independent experts “led to children being reunited with parents, despite initial concerns reported by the clinical team”.
Home of the week 🏡
This three bedroom Gleadless semi might not look like anything special from the front — but go out to the back garden and it’s actually got a massive swimming pool! It’s on the market for £325,000.
Tribune Tips: If you want to tell us about a story or give us some information, please email editor@sheffieldtribune.co.uk. We are always happy to speak to people off the record in the first poll instance, and we will treat your information with confidence and sensitivity.
Things to do
Talk 💬 Tomorrow lunchtime, head down to Weston Park Museum for a free talk on the work of John Berger. The talk, which coincides with the release of a new book about Berger called The Underground Sea, will focus specifically on his writing about miners and the miners’ strikes. Though better known as an art critic and the author of Ways of Seeing, Berger wrote an essay, ‘Miners’, based in the heart of a Derbyshire mining village, with reflections on the everyday life of a typical pit community. Book your place here.
Craft 💍 Tomorrow evening, Brincliffe workshop Silver Psaltpot is hosting a three-hour taster session in making silver jewellery. Attendees will learn the basics of texturing, soldering, hand forming and polishing and all leave with a beautiful piece of hand-made jewellery. Tickets are £40 and silver has to be purchased on the night, at a typical cost of around £5. Grab a ticket here.
Music 🪘 On Wednesday night, Arooj Banqueting Suite in Attercliffe is welcoming an internationally popular nine-person band of classical singers from Pakistan, called Shahbaz Fayyaz Qawwal. The band perform Qawwali, a form of Sufi Islamic devotional singing originating in South Asia, which aims to induce a trance-like state in musicians and the audience. You can find out more about Qawwali through this BBC Asian Network explainer here and get a ticket to see the show here.
I am a life-long cyclist, for both getting around Sheffield and for leisure, enjoying all the hills the city and the Peak District has to offer. I participated in the "die-in" protest last year (during which we witnessed an appalling act of pre-meditated road-rage - I wonder what happened to that driver?) I'm also a car driver (as I imagine many cyclists are) and a pedestrian. Virtually every time I cycle I have to avoid a car driver doing something stupid that endangers me - carving me up; turning left in front of me; opening car doors into my path etc. Sometimes drivers deliberately target me. Drivers who injure or kill cyclists should very clearly be punished. If they do so when drunk, speeding, on their phones, deliberately driving dangerously or knowingly being careless then the punishment should be severe. But whether sending a driver who momentarily doesn't pay attention to prison would help is, in my view, pretty doubtful - there are surely much more constructive ways to respond to the terrible harm they have caused. All this said, what we really need is a massive culture change so that car drivers see and treat cyclists in a fundamentally different way. We also need to change the road infrastructure so that it reduces risk (for pedestrians, for cyclists and, indeed, for car drivers and their passengers). The former will take many years, and needs to start from the very top (which won't happen so long as the "car lobby" is seen as politically crucial and anti-cyclist culture wars abound). The latter requires £ billions. And we probably need to improve how people are assessed for their continued fitness to drive - I wonder how many of us know people who for reasons of illness or infirmity should no longer be driving - tricky territory, but not to be shied away from.
That quote "driving is a privilege not a right" was me. I think there should be an automatic life driving ban for anyone who kills someone else with a motor car.