Lorry driver killer to be sentenced over M1 smart motorway death crash near Meadowhall

During a hearing in September, Prezemyslaw Zbigniew Szuba, aged 40, admitted causing the deaths of two motorists in a collision last June.

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Jason Mercer, 44, and Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, died when a lorry ploughed into their stationary vehicles after they pulled over to exchange details following a minor crash.

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Because they were on a stretch of smart motorway, there was no hard shoulder.

Szuba, from Hull, admitted two counts of causing death by driving without due care and attention when he appeared at Sheffield Magistrates’ Court in September and he is to be sentenced today at the city’s Crown Court.

Mr Mercer, from Rotherham, and Mr Murgeanu, from Mansfield, were travelling northbound, between junctions 34 and 35, when they were involved in a ‘minor bump’ and stopped to exchange details.

Outlining the case to magistrates, Susan Fisher, prosecuting, said lorry was not speeding.

She said: “From the Crown’s perspective, the defendant has simply not seen the vehicles that have stopped and not slowed down sufficiently.”

Nicola Hale, defending, said her client had only just joined the motorway at junction 34 and ‘it was only for a matter of seconds that the (stationary) vehicles were visible’.

She said the evidence in the case showed Szuba was driving ‘normally’ and well within the speed limit just before the crash.

Since her husband’s death, Mr Mercer’s wife, Claire, has mounted a campaign calling for smart motorways to be scrapped.

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