A MAN who killed a much-loved father of two has been jailed for more than four years.

Window salesman Daniel Midgley was said to have treated the road “like a dual carriageway”, and was pulling in and out of traffic en route to meet a customer when his Toyota Auris smashed into Parvin Vekaria’s Nissan Qashqai on a blind bend on the afternoon of April 4, 2022.

Mr Vekaria, 59, from Shipley, was seriously injured in the collision on Hebden Bridge Road at Pecket Well, between Hebden Bridge and Haworth. He died 11 days later in Bradford Royal Infirmary. 

Bradford Telegraph and Argus:

In court, emotional statements from his wife and children were read out, detailing the devastating impact of his death. 

Prosecutor Andrew Stranex told the court that Midgley, now 26, of Balmoral Chase in Leeds, had ignored road markings advising drivers to “slow” and had failed to take an opportunity to pull back into his own lane moments before the crash.

Another driver who witnessed him on the wrong side of the road later told police he felt it would “not end well”.

Mr Stranex said Midgley had demonstrated “a flagrant disregard for the rules of the road … as he was effectively entering what was a blind bend.”

Mitigating for Midgley, Mike Walsh said he had “racked his brain” to recall why he had driven in such a way on the day of the crash, but that he could not recall what caused him to do so.

He said Midgley accepted the situation was “inexplicable” and that he could not explain it to himself or others.

In sentencing Midgley to 56 months – or four years and eight months – in prison for causing death by dangerous driving, His Honour Judge Jonathan Rose said the crash may have been due to Midgley’s impatience to get to his destination.

He said: “No sentence that this court will impose will be or could be a measure of the life of this man. Nor will it compensate for his death or be any comfort to those whose lives have been irreversibly damaged by the loss of this much-loved man.

“The psychological harm in a case such as this goes beyond mere bereavement.

“It is of course trite comment to observe that none of this was necessary.”