Motorist who killed while in diabetic trance is cleared of dangerous driving

A Microsoft manager who was on the wrong side of the road and travelling at 101mph when he crashed into another vehicle, killing the driver, has walked free from court after a jury decided he was in a diabetic trance when the incident took place.

Although Richard Turpin accepted that he drove dangerously and killed Phillip Taylor, he pleaded not guilty to causing death by dangerous driving on the ground that he was not in control of his actions.

The outcome of the case at Reading Crown Court has implications for tens of thousands of diabetics who drive. Mr Taylor's distraught family immediately called for a change in the law.

Mr Taylor, a building services engineer with a one-year-old daughter at the time of the crash last July, was killed instantly while on his way home to Holyport, near Maidenhead, after delivering an injured bird to a vet.

Mr Turpin was cleared of causing death by dangerous driving after the jury heard he was in a state of automatism – loss of voluntary control – brought about by diabetic hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.

The jury accepted he was in the midst of a hypoglycemic episode, which made him drive "on auto-pilot". Mr Turpin, driving a silver Audi A3, had been overtaking a line of terrified motorists on the A308 Windsor Road near Maidenhead and narrowly missed a 16-year-old moped rider moments before the impact. Mr Turpin, who was not wearing a seatbelt, broke every bone in the right side of his body and now walks with the aid of a stick.

The court heard that he had been a diabetic since the age of 14 and was in the final stages of the hypoglycemic episode when the crash happened. He had changed the type of insulin he was injecting twice daily just two weeks before the crash and said he could remember nothing of the fateful day. He had driven nearly 50 miles in the wrong direction after leaving work to travel to his home in Barton-le-Clay, Bedfordshire.