Lorry driver jailed after crash which killed two men on smart motorway

A lorry driver who caused the deaths of two men in a collision on a stretch of smart motorway has been jailed for 10 months.

Prezemyslaw Zbigniew Szuba, 40, admitted two counts of causing death by driving without due care and attention when he appeared at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court last month.

Szuba, 40, of Adelaide Street, Hull, was sentenced at Sheffield Crown Court on Monday.

Jason Mercer, 44, and Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, died when the lorry ploughed into their stationary vehicles on the M1 near Sheffield on 7 June last year.

Since her husband’s death, Mercer’s wife Claire has mounted a prominent campaign against smart motorways, arguing that he would not have died if there had been a hard shoulder.

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Speaking outside court, she said: “We don’t believe the correct person is taking responsible for this massive detrimental effect on ours and so many other people’s lives.

“The events of June 7, 2019, would not have taken place if there had been a hard shoulder and Highways England was run with the correct priorities in mind – not concentrating on who wins the next big contract.”

The magistrates’ court heard how Mercer, from Rotherham, and Murgeanu, from Mansfield, had been involved in a “minor bump” on the northbound carriageway of the M1, between junctions 34 and 35, and had stopped in the slow lane.

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Szuba’s Mercedes HGV “ploughed into both vehicles”.

Prosecutors said the lorry was not speeding and there was no suggestion that the defendant had been drinking or was on drugs.

Nicola Hale, defending, said her client had only just joined the motorway at junction 34 and “it was only for a matter of seconds that the (stationary) vehicles were visible”.

She said the evidence in the case showed Szuba was driving “normally” and well within the speed limit just before the crash.

Imposing the prison term for causing the deaths by careless driving, Judge Jeremy Richardson QC said: “Had there been a hard shoulder, or had the victims driven on for another mile to the refuge, this catastrophe would never have occurred.”