A speeding motorist was playing a computer racing game in his car shortly before he caused a crash in which a pensioner died, a court was told.

Christopher Hayden, 19, overtook a BMW after finishing playing Gran Turismo on his PlayStation while parked in a layby. He was on the wrong side of the road and driving at up to 55mph in a 40mph area on a cold night when he crashed into 79-year-old Phylis Williams on a hazardous bend.

Bournemouth Crown Court in Dorset was told that Mrs Williams’s car spun into the path of the BMW and somersaulted through the air. She died at the scene of the crash.

Judge Christopher Harvey Clark said: “One of the troubling features of the case is looking at and playing the game on the PlayStation beforehand, in the sense that he was playing a game involving vehicles of excessive speed immediately before his driving.

“When I heard he had a monitor screen that would come up from the dashboard of the car whereby he could play on the PlayStation a game of that sort, it didn’t seem to me to be particularly desirable.”

Hayden and James Budden, 28, who was driving the BMW, were cleared of causing death by dangerous driving but found guilty of careless driving.

Judge Clark fined Hayden £1,000 and deducted five points from his licence. He fined Budden £750 and took only three points from his licence as an “act of mercy”. The court was told that Budden would not be able to drive his terminally-ill girlfriend in a mobility vehicle if the judge deducted more.

The court was told that the two men had been driving too fast and too close together as they approached the bend in Three Legged Cross on January 11 last year.

James Patrick, for the prosecution, told the jury: “There is no evidence that they knew each other at all in advance of the events of that night. You will want to look carefully to see if there was any evidence of racing and whether this was two people showing off or not.”

A witness said that the men were “driving so fast and so close together” that she swore and her son called them “bloody chavs”.

Hayden, of Three Legged Cross, and Budden, of Poole, admitted driving above the 40mph speed limit.

Budden’s passengers suffered cuts and bruises and were dazed and shocked after his car spun and flipped over from the impact.

Mr Patrick said that Mrs Williams, of Verwood, Dorset, was driving at about 25mph and could not have avoided the crash. “There was nothing that she could do.”

Mrs Williams’s family said: “We hope people will take a moment to think about how they drive, in the hope that future lives can be saved and other families avoid the anguish we have been through.”

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