Two years ago in May 2019 I was involved in what could have been a disastrous collision. I was driving towards Chippenham from Corsham when the car behind me crashed at speed into the back of my car.
Instead of pulling back, he continued to push my car forwards. For a few moments I accelerated and disconnected from him, but he also accelerated, crashed into me forcefully again, pushed me along for several hundred yards until my car left the road and turned upside down, partly on a hedge and partly in a ditch.
If I had hit a tree or a telegraph post I would have been killed. As it was, thank God, I was left hanging upside-down in my seatbelt completely unhurt with not even a scratch! The other driver sped away but was eventually caught by the police.
For some unaccountable reason he was not taken to court, but a couple of months later he did the same thing again, driving at speed into the back of a Range Rover. However, this time he failed to knock the Range Rover off the road, and instead overtook it, changed gear, speeded up to over 80mph on the wrong side of the road and crashed into a Honda, killing two elderly passengers and injuring the driver.
Nicholas Haynes appeared in a magistrates court and was tagged and forbidden to drive pending a Crown Court hearing.
The Court hearing was scheduled for June 2020 - a year after the collisions, but was delayed until May 2021, presumably as a result of the covid lockdown. His defence claimed that he had suffered an epileptic fit, and the judge instructed the jury to find him Not Guilty. I am astonished, to say the least, by this verdict. I am sure that he was fully in control of his car when he rammed me off the road. In the subsequent collision, which was the subject of the trial, it seems unlikely to me that a man disabled by an epileptic fit would change gear, speed up and steer past the Range Rover, only to crash into a car coming the other way. The defence argument of epilepsy seems preposterous, and is compounded by the jury being instructed as to what decision to make.
The newspaper report of the court hearing is at https://www.wiltsglosstandard.co.uk/news/19333165.judge-directs-not-guilty-verdicts-fatal-crash-court-case/
My reaction.
You may wonder how I feel about this outcome. Certainly I feel grateful that I emerged from my collision physically unscathed, and I feel sure that I was protected by God from harm. I do wonder though what the relatives of those who died will be making of the verdict.
I’ve had plenty of time to think about it all, and I believe that this is an unfinished story. There spring to my mind two stories from history which provide examples of where a terrible situation turned into something completely different.
The first Christian martyr.
Stephen was a leader in the early Christian church in Jerusalem. His story is in the Bible in Acts 6 and 7. He was arrested for preaching the good news about Jesus, falsely accused of blasphemy, and executed by stoning.
If the story ended there, it would be just one more tale of a miscarriage of justice – though Stephen’s own reaction to what was happening to him was extraordinarily inspiring: if you don’t know the story it’s well worth reading! The story could have ended with his death – but it didn’t! The authorities had Stephen stoned as a warning to the growing numbers of believers in Jesus to keep quiet about their faith and do nothing to spread it. Yet today there are hundreds of millions of Christian believers worldwide, whose lives have been revolutionised and whose practical work especially in health, education and voluntary service have made the world an immeasurably better place, The injustice of Stephen’s death has been turned on its head.
The slave-ship captain.
The second story which came to my mind was that of John Newton. (1725-1807). This is not so much about a miscarriage of justice as about a dreadful evil which, when we read on, became a great good. A bad beginning with a good ending.
Newton lost his first job, in a merchant's office, because of "unsettled behavior and impatience of restraint"—a pattern that would persist for years. He spent his later teen years at sea before he was press-ganged aboard the H.M.S. Harwich in 1744. Newton rebelled against the discipline of the Royal Navy and deserted. He was caught, put in irons, and flogged. He eventually convinced his superiors to discharge him to a slave ship.
Newton served on a number of different slave ships, eventually being promoted to captain. On one voyage he was caught in a violent storm. Having been influenced by reading the bible and Christian books he converted to Christianity during the storm, realising at the time how fragile life was and how dependent he was on God’s good will. He continued for some years as a slave trader, hoping as a Christian to restrain the worst excesses of the slave trade, "promoting the life of God in the soul" of both his crew and his African cargo.
After leaving the sea for an office job in 1755, Newton held Bible studies in his Liverpool home. He became increasingly disgusted with the slave trade and his role in it. He quit, was ordained into the Anglican ministry, and in 1764 took a parish in Olney in Buckinghamshire. In 1787 Newton wrote Thoughts Upon the African Slave Trade to help William Wilberforce's campaign to end the practice—"a business at which my heart now shudders," he wrote. Recollection of that chapter in his life never left him, and in his old age, when it was suggested that the increasingly feeble Newton retire, he replied, "I cannot stop. What? Shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak?"
Newton became well known as a hymn writer, his most famous hymn being Amazing Grace.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind but now I see……
The point, to me, of both these stories – the martyrdom of
Stephen and the conversion of John Newton, is that neither story ended with
disaster. In both cases, great evil was
turned eventually into great good. I
can hope and pray that the court's verdict on the driving of Nicholas
Haynes may not be the end of the story and may yet be turned to good at some stage in the future
.
