Drug-driver hit speeds of 141mph before killing two women in horror crash

“The last thing they would have seen was your car on their side of the road,” the judge said
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A drug-driver was recorded speeding at 141mph shortly before killing two women in a horrific crash.

Daniel Young has been jailed for eight years for killing Caroline Ball, 63, and 59-year-old Margaret Collier – who both died almost instantly.

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He was overtaking a line of cars at about 90mph when he hit the vehicle and it came just four months after he got his licence back following a six-month ban.

The 25-year-old Amazon warehouse worker also filmed a video named “How to Beat the Speed Cameras” a few weeks before the fatal crash, Derby Crown Court heard.

The clip showed him deliberately driving on the wrong side of a road at 80mph in a 30mph zone, the Yorkshire Post reports.

The victims, who both worked as cleaners at a site near the M1, had travelled from their homes in the Sheffield area before their vehicle was hit head-on at Renishaw on the morning of October 7, 2020.

What the judge said

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Judge Shaun Smith was told Young left work after a night shift at Amazon’s site in Barlborough, near Chesterfield, at 5.30am and drove his BMW on the A6135 at between 115mph and 141mph in a 40mph zone.

Passing sentence, Judge Smith ordered Young to serve a 10-year driving ban after his release from prison.

Young, who appeared via a video-link from HMP Lincoln, looked at the floor and appeared to fight back tears as Judge Smith told him that a lorry driver had wrongly thought the BMW was racing another vehicle because of its speed.

The judge told Young: “The next time you were seen was when you went past a camera outside a local Co-op. The time-over-distance calculation has been worked out. You were travelling between 115mph and 141mph down the hill towards Renishaw on a speed limit of 40mph.

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“Your next manoeuvre was to overtake the vehicles in front of you around a blind bend, on the wrong side of the road. You negotiated that bend at approximately 90mph. Tragically Caroline and Margaret were travelling on the opposite carriageway.

“As they went around that bend the last thing they would have seen was your car on their side of the road.”

Young twice the legal limit for cannabis

The court was told the impact occurred with such force that the Corsa being driven by Ms Ball was pushed 30 metres backwards into a hedge.

Judge Smith said a blood test had shown that Young, of Drury Lane, Coal Aston, Dronfield, was twice the legal limit for cannabis.

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Young pleaded guilty to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving, having initially denied speeding while claiming he was not to blame for the “tragic accident”.

‘The complete disregard he showed is utterly staggering’

Detective Constable Scott Cooper, from Derbyshire Constabulary’s Collision Investigation Unit, said: “The complete disregard that Daniel Young showed that morning is utterly staggering.

“But this was no one-off event. The evidence found on his own phone shows that he would use the public roads as his own personal racetrack – filming himself laughing at speeds that would eventually rob two families of two beloved women.

“The sentence handed down to Young will never bring back Caroline and Margaret, but I hope that it brings some closure to their families, and shows that driving in the same way as Young is simply unacceptable.”

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