Driver ‘could have done nothing to avoid hitting man’ - Inquest

However, Berkshire coroner Peter Bedford ruled that the car driver, Richard Rosier, had behaved entirely appropriately.
Arthur Brown, who had worsening dementia, had walked out of his home while his wife and carer, Mary, was talking on the telephone.
When she noticed the 83-year-old had vanished, she immediately launched a hunt to find him, before her neighbour discovered that he had been hit by a car just a few hundred yards from his home.
In the winter darkness, at first Mr Rosier, had not spotted Mr Brown lying in the road, and then had mistaken him for a rubbish bag.
Mr Rosier had tried to brake, but it was too late and he hit Mr Brown, who was thought to have fallen into the road, at Cold Ash Hill, directly outside St Mark’s Primary School.
As a result the road was closed for about three hours and Mr Brown was taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.
Mr Brown, who was frail, had a walking stick but, in a statement from his wife, the inquest into his death heard that “out of pride he would not use it.
“He never left the house without telling me, and never in the dark,” she said.
She had been on the phone for around 15 minutes when she noticed her husband had vanished, on November 30 last year, she said. Soon afterwards he was found by neighbour Diane Goodfellow, having been hit by Mr Rosier’s red Suzuki car.
Another driver, Luke Susans, told the hearing at Windsor, that Mr Brown had been lying in the road at the point of impact.
“He wasn’t crossing or making an attempt to cross the road, he was lying in the road,” said Mr Susans.
“It’s an unfortunate accident that it was him [Mr Rosier]; it could have been me; it could have been the bloke behind him; it just happened to be him.”
In a statement he was led through by Berkshire coroner Peter Bedford, Mr Rosier said that he had spotted something lying in the road but, before he could see properly what it was, he was upon it.
He said that his headlamps had picked up a shadow in the road, as he travelled at around 30mph.
“My first thought was that it was a dustbin bag. I thought it would hit the car, so I braked to avoid impact.”
Police crash investigator Tony Reading said that it would have been very difficult for Mr Rosier to spot Mr Brown as he was wearing dark clothing.
He said that it was likely Mr Brown had fallen in the road and was unable to get back up again.
“Mr Rosier applied emergency braking quickly and appropriately,” he said.
After being taken to the John Radcliffe Hospital, Mr Brown was later transferred to a specialist unit at the Nuffield Orthopaedic Hospital where he had been due to have a hip replacement.
However, he was never deemed strong enough for surgery by doctors, who feared that he could have died on the operating table.
His condition deteriorated and he died on December 15. Mr Brown’s cause of death was given as bronchial-pneumonia and multiple injuries, although it was found that he also had ischaemic heart disease and cerebral vascular disease.
Mr Bedford recorded that his death had been an accident.
“There’s no evidence that Mr Brown was in anyway moving or doing anything that would make him conspicuous,” he said.
“We know how dark it was. He wasn’t wearing bright clothing and the extent of visibility would have been the extent of the dipped headlights.
“Mr Rosier had shown remarkable reactions to seeing something totally unprotected lying in the road.”