Legal

Baroness bus driver to face dangerous driving charges

By | Published on Thursday 7 February 2013

Baroness

Norman Markus, the driver of the tour bus carrying US metal band Baroness, which crashed in Somerset last August and fell 30 feet off a viaduct, is to face a variety of charges in relation to the crash.

Following a “very complicated investigation”, Andrew Walters of the Crown Prosecution Service told the BBC that Markus has been charged with dangerous driving, taking insufficient daily and weekly rest periods, using a vehicle with defective brakes, using a vehicle likely to cause danger of injury, not having the correct licence to drive said vehicle, and breaching the road’s 7.5 tonne weight limit.

As previously reported, Markus was one of the people injured in the crash, along with the four members of the band. Frontman John Baizley underwent eight hours of surgery to reconstruct his left arm, writing on the band’s website in October: “While I cannot lift a glass of water to my lips to drink with my left arm and hand, I am still able to play music with it. I picked up a guitar and played the day after I returned. Not without pain (for the time being), but the hand still acts out the creative impulses I give it. I’m told I was quite lucky to have regained any use at all of my hand and arm, though I have sustained quite extensive nerve damage”.

Markus is due to appear before Bath Magistrates Court on 5 Apr.



READ MORE ABOUT: |