Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
NEW YORK, 17th Jan. Indian British surgeon Dr Shanthi Chandran on Tuesday said that his car collided with the schoolgirl as she stepped into the road on her way to school in Buckingham Road, Bicester, in January 2018.
The surgeon in south-central England has been ordered to pay 135,000 pounds in damages after her car hit a 12-year-old girl, caused serious head injury, collarbone fracture and other complications.
Chandran, a consultant physician at Milton Keynes hospital, was on her way to work in her BMW i3 Range Extender when the incident happened, the Oxford Mail newspaper reported.
Polica said that the child’s head hit the nearside windscreen of her car, caused the glass to shatter.
Officers said her body was “thrown” or carried 11 metres beyond the pedestrian crossing and to the entrance of a petrol station due to the force of the collision.
The girl who is 18-years-old now suffered a serious head injury, a bleed to the brain and a fracture in her left collarbone.
According to court documents, she was intubated and ventilated for three days and was in hospital for 10 days.
She was “left with cognitive and psychiatric problems”, suffered nightmares and “PTSD-type symptoms”. during the first year post accident
The girl blamed Dr. Chandran for negligence, said she “was driving too fast given the prevailing conditions and if she were driving at a safe and reasonable speed, the collision would not have happened”.
Chandran told police that she was driving at 28mph, which was below the applicable speed limit of 30 mph and appropriate for the conditions, and that she immediately stopped her car after she saw that a young girl had been hit.
Dr. Chandran told the court that the incident was caused by the girl stepping out into the road when the lights were green, in her defense.
Judge Dexter Dias said it was a “common misconception” that it was “reasonable” to drive just below the speed limit.
“While this case is not about a fatality, it shows yet again how dangerous it is to drive at excessive and unreasonable speed,” Judge Dias had said.
The court determined a 40 per cent reduction in the initially proposed 225,000 pounds in damages “because of the contributory negligence of the girl stepping out into the road while the traffic lights were green”, The Mail reported.
The compensation was determined at the High Court last month, and the judgment was published on January 11.
