Coach driver cleared after crash

A coach driver was yesterday cleared of dangerous driving and causing the deaths of 10 passengers in a crash. Phillip Crisp, 26, who was found not guilty on all charges at Cardiff Crown Court, had said that his brakes failed as the coach neared a roundabout on the A40 at Raglan, Monmouthshire, in July 1995.

The 16-ton vehicle, with more than 40 passengers, skidded and overturned, killing eight women and two men who were on a day trip from the Cynon Valley in South Wales to Stratford-upon-Avon. The prosecution alleged that Mr Crisp approached the roundabout too fast and failed to use his gears correctly. Examiners found that neither rear brakes of the wrecked coach were working, although the front brakes were. At a hearing at Abergavenny magistrates' court last year the coach owner, Ronald Lewis, 52, was fined pounds 750 after admitting operating a vehicle with defective brakes, a faulty speed limiter and two tachograph offences.