Victorian truckie David Cameron has avoided jail after he fell asleep behind the wheel of a logging truck and crashed into a car driven by Yass mother Ashleigh Allred near Canberra on April 13, 2022.
While her two sons escaped with minor injuries, Allred spent 13 days in an induced coma and a total of 232 days in hospital with serious injuries and was left a paraplegic.
Cameron pleaded guilty to charges of negligent driving causing grievous bodily harm and four counts of causing bodily harm by misconduct before he appeared in the Queanbeyan Local Court to be sentenced on Tuesday, August 29.
The East Gippsland 60-year-old was handed a nine-month intensive corrections order, which is a community-based sentence, and Magistrate Roger Clisdell also disqualified him from driving for 18 months, reported The Canberra Star.
In his decision Clisdell said it was “remarkable” no one was killed given the “carnage”.
Clisdell accepted Cameron may have experienced a microsleep on the clear stretch of road before he collided with the vehicles stationary at roadworks.
Cameron, who had been a truckie for 30 years, had since been diagnosed with sleep apnea and now receives treatment for the condition.
He was remorseful, previously had an excellent driving record, was unlikely to reoffend and had claimed he would never drive trucks again, the magistrate said.