Firefighter Ross Queen avoids driving ban for crashing car into lorry

Ross Queen drove his car through a give way junction and collided with the large HGV, leaving his wife and two family members with serious injuries.

Queen, 35, was heading home from a trip to Alton Towers when he failed to notice the “notorious” junction on the outskirts of Penicuik in Midlothian in October last year.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told that the firefighter’s wife Nicola suffered a broken hip, while her sister was left with a fractured wrist and her husband with a broken rib.

Queen admitted an amended charge of careless driving during a court hearing on Friday but escaped a driving ban and instead was handed penalty points and a fine.

Fiscal depute Xander Van Der Scheer told the court that Queen was driving his red Citroen with his wife, her sister and her husband in the passenger seats on the A701 on October 10 last year.

The fiscal said that Queen, of Poplar Street, Dunbar, approached “a notorious junction for road traffic collisions” and drove through the give way, crashing into the path of an oncoming HGV carrying 280,000 eggs.

The Citroen spun in the road before coming to a halt nearby and the vehicle’s emergency assistance unit instantly alerted the emergency services to the collision.

The police, ambulance and fire service raced to the scene, where Queen’s wife Nicola had to be cut free from the wreckage while the three other occupants managed to escape on their own.

Mr Van Der Scheer said that Queen’s wife was taken to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh for treatment to a broken hip and said the firefighter subsequently provided a negative breath test to police.

Solicitor Jonathan Campbell, representing Queen, told the court that his client worked for the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service as well as being employed as a joiner and fabricator.

Ross Queen. Image: Facebook

Mr Campbell said that Queen was his local fire team’s only qualified blue light driver and that he was travelling home from a family break at Alton Towers when the collision took place.

The solicitor said that the father-of-two was following his satellite navigation system, which he said did not alert him to the junction.

He added that the vehicle’s automatic braking system had kicked in after Queen swerved to miss a traffic island, resulting in him not being able to get out of the way of the oncoming truck in time.

The court was told that the lorry driver was not injured during the incident and any road ban would result in Queen’s local community being “deprived” of a qualified blue light firefighter.

Sheriff Christopher Dickson said: “I accept what has been said on your behalf by Mr Campbell and also accept that the analysis of the driving was at the higher end of the scale of careless driving.

“But in all the circumstances, I am not going to disqualify you.”

The sheriff imposed six penalty points on Queen’s licence and fined him a total of £600.