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UK: Coroner calls for cannabis testing

BBC Online

Friday 30 Jan 2004

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A coroner is to call on the government to make the testing victims of fatal
road accidents for cannabis a routine procedure.

Aidan Cotter made his pledge at the conclusion of an inquest into a
motorist who crashed a Land Rover onto a railway line in Birmingham,
killing himself and his brother-in-law, and severely injuring his own young
son.

It emerged that as well as flouting two driving bans and being nearly twice
the legal drink-drive limit, builder Anthony Gilsenan had also taken cannabis.

Recording a verdict of death as a result of a road traffic accident, Mr
Cotter told the inquest on Friday he would be writing to the Home Office
asking if it was appropriate for all coroners to routinely test the victims
in such deaths for the drug.

Mr Cotter said it was impossible to say how soon Mr Gilsenan had consumed
the drug before he got behind the wheel and whether this contributed to him
losing control of the 4x4 before it smashed through a bridge wall and
plunged nearly 50ft between the tracks.

"I believe it will show that there is a significant proportion of drivers
in road fatalities who have cannabis in their blood," Mr Cotter said.

"It will not show whether cannabis is a cause of these accidents, but
people may think there is something more than coincidence if a significant
number of drivers are found to have been using cannabis shortly before an
accident."

The inquest heard Mr Gilsenan, from Rubery in Birmingham, had been drinking
in two pubs before driving his wife's Land Rover.

With him were his son Dominic, then aged nine, and his brother-in-law.

After crashing on to the railway line in Longbridge, the Land Rover was
clipped by a Bristol-bound train moments after landing upside down.

Mr Cotter said the crash on 11 June last year could have been far worse,
though none of the 80 passengers on board the train were injured.

 

 

 

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