US servicewoman cleared of causing motorcyclist’s death by careless driving

Matthew Day, 33, died after the incident involving Airman first class Mikayla Hayes in Norfolk in August 2023.

Airman first class Mikayla Hayes who was cleared at Norwich Crown Court of causing the death of motorcyclist Matthew Day by careless driving (Joe Giddens/ PA) (PA Wire)

A US servicewoman has been cleared of causing the death of a motorcyclist by careless driving after she emerged from a side road across his path while travelling home from her airbase.

Airman first class Mikayla Hayes, who had denied the offence, earlier wept as she gave evidence at Norwich Crown Court and said: “I still to this day have no idea why I didn’t see that motorcycle.”

The 25-year-old had been turning right, towards her home in Downham Market, as she travelled back from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk where she worked, when the crash happened.

She emerged from the B1160 Lynn Road across the path of 33-year-old Matthew Day as he travelled south along the A10 at Southery in Norfolk on August 26 last year.

The father-of-one’s Yamaha motorbike struck her Honda Accord and he died of his injuries later that day.

Christine Agnew KC said, during her defence closing speech: “Sometimes it’s just an accident and there’s no-one to blame.”

She told jurors that “this case is not just another US airman case” and she mentioned the case of Harry Dunn and Anne Sacoolas.

Motorcyclist Harry Dunn was 19 when a Volvo, driven on the wrong side of the road by US citizen Sacoolas, fatally smashed into him outside RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire in 2019.

Sacoolas was able to leave the UK after diplomatic immunity was asserted on her behalf.

Ms Agnew said there was “no suggestion” that Hayes had “tried to flee the country or escape justice”.

The barrister said that, unlike the case of Sacoolas, Hayes’s was not a case of a foreign national driving on the wrong side of the road.

“She is an extremely competent driver with plenty of driving experience both in the US and in this country,” Ms Agnew said.

Hayes, from Indiana, works as an aerospace ground equipment mechanic, working on equipment associated with jets such as generators, heaters and tow bars.

She joined the US Air Force in 2021 having previously attended two separate universities but not finishing either degree.

She completed her basic and technical training in Texas and had put England at the top of her “dream sheet” of locations where she wanted to work.

Hayes said she got her full US driver’s licence aged 16 and after moving to the UK, passed a written test about the highway code.

She told jurors: “I believe I’m a very careful driver and I kept looking for traffic both ways, and I don’t know why I didn’t see him that day.”

She said that traffic that Friday, at the start of the August bank holiday weekend, was “heavier than normal”.

She said she did not see the motorbike until it was “about a second (away), five to six feet in front of me”.

Witness Graeme Pratt, a motorcyclist waiting at the junction behind Hayes, said he “could see the person in the driver’s seat looking both ways”.

Defence expert witness Robert Wagstaff, an independent forensic collision investigator, argued that Mr Day reacted more slowly to the car pulling out than would be expected, based on research times.

Mr Day was found to have a “low concentration of THC” in his system, indicating he had taken cannabis at some point before the collision.

Professor Alex Stedmon, an independent road safety consultant called as an expert witness by the defence, said the junction “appears to be a hotspot or a blackspot for accidents”.