A great-grandmother who was found to be uninsured to drive when she knocked down a pedestrian has escaped a road ban after she blamed a garbled phone call with a call centre worker based 8,000 miles away.
Frances Peach, 85, was found to have no insurance on her Peugeot 107 when she hit Lea Swindley in the street as the victim was walking home from the school run.
But when quizzed, the pensioner, from Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, insisted the policy had been ‘accidentally’ cancelled by her insurers without her knowledge after she battled to stop her forthcoming automatic renewal.
A court heard Peach had called her insurers to say she would be taking out a cheaper policy with a different company when warned she would be charged three times the price on her current premium.
But she was forwarded to a call handler in South Africa whom she did not understand because of his accent.
Following a stilted conversation, a court heard Peach told the advisor: ‘I just want it cancelled.’
She ended the call, not realising her existing policy had also been scrapped with ten days to go.
She claimed at the time of the accident she had failed to see Ms Swindley crossing the road and said she she had hugged her following the impact.
Frances Peach, 85, knocked over a pedestrian while uninsured to drive, but blamed the lapse on struggling to understand the accent of a call centre worker based in South Africa
At Chester magistrates court, Peach faced a 56 day road ban under sentencing guidelines after she admitted careless driving and having no insurance.
But instead her licence was endorsed with six penalty points. She was also fined £576 and ordered to pay £360 in costs and surcharge.
The incident occurred at 9am on September 16 last year.
The victim said she checked the road was clear before crossing – but halfway across saw Peach’s car turn sharply towards her onto the wrong side of the road.
In a statement, Ms Swindley said: ‘It drove straight into me.
‘I went over the vehicle backwards and twisted and landed on my left side.’
She said the driver stopped and asked if she was okay, and later needed hospital treatment for tissue damage.
The incident has also had an impact on her mental health, prosecutor Hannah Munnelly told the court.
‘She struggles to leave the house on her own and is nervous to cross the road in case this happens again,’ she said.
Questioned by police at the scene, the pensioner ‘admitted she did not see Ms Swindley as she turned into the junction’, the prosecutor said.
She was found to have no valid insurance in place.
In mitigation, Chris Hunt told JPs her insurance policy had been due to renew ten days after the incident.
‘But you will be very familiar with the ploy on the part of insurance companies over the obligation to sign up for automatic renewal – and when it came along it was three times up from the year before,’ he said.
‘Her daughter is pretty sharp with figures and she said “No way are you paying this” and she secured a much cheaper renewal.’
But the ‘problem’ arose when she tried to inform her existing insurers to tell them that she did not want it to automatically renew.
‘She rang up the call centre and spoke to someone in South Africa with a pronounced African accent that she was having difficulty understanding, and tried to explain that she did not want it automatically renewed,’ her lawyer said.
‘She could not understand what he was saying and just said “I just want it cancelled” and left it that.’
On the day of the incident, she had checked the road, but in a ‘momentary lapse on her part… she has not seen the pedestrian in front of her,’ Mr Hunt said.
‘She has not cut the corner.’
He said the pensioner had been ‘very upset’ by what happened and called police and an ambulance.
‘She was hugging the person who had been knocked over by her,’ he added.
‘She is very grateful that the injuries were not more serious.
‘She admitted at the scene that she did not see the pedestrian.’
Peach had since discovered that the call centre worker ‘had cancelled her insurance policy in its entirety, which left her with no cover whatsoever – despite her having paid for it,’ Mr Hunt said.
‘This is not a case where she didn’t care about her obligations to other road users or was negligent.
‘You can have a degree of sympathy for a mistake that all of us could fall into, frankly.’
He added that his client had been ‘beside herself with worry’ about the prospect of coming to court, had lost 4st in weight and had at one stage wrongly feared she might go to prison.
‘She has never been in court before,’ Mr Hunt said.
‘This is never going to happen again.’
He added that she had undergone five eye tests since the incident ‘and passed all of them with flying colours’.
‘There is no issue with her ability to drive,’ he said.
Peach herself told the hearing: ‘I can only say to the lady I was shocked and I did hug her.’