by Steve Carroll

SURVIVORS of the Great Heck rail disaster today revealed their anger at Gary Hart's five-year prison sentence.

Many feel the man convicted of causing the death of ten people should have been jailed for longer.

Hart, 37, of Strubby, Lincolnshire, was today behind bars after Mr Justice Mackay told him yesterday: "An accident in the circumstances you chose to put yourself was almost inevitable."

A jury decided that Hart fell asleep at the wheel, causing his Land Rover to leave the M62 and veer on to the East Coast Main Line.

There, it was hit by a York to Kings Cross passenger train, which then collided with a freight train travelling in the opposite direction. Ten men were killed.

Today, one survivor said Hart should have been given ten years, the maximum sentence which can be imposed for causing death by dangerous driving.

Andy Hill, a driver of the freight train hit by the GNER express, said: "I think it is too short. I was expecting something like ten years, which would probably have been reduced on appeal.

"I am not happy, but now I have to get on with picking up the pieces of my life."

Mark Russell, a branch secretary with rail union RMT, was sitting in coach A when the tragic accident happened on February 28.

Mr Russell said: "He has received a custodial sentence, but five years for killing ten people? It is not enough.

"I remember everything clearly. I remember hearing a loud, gravel-like sound. Then there was the impact and I was thrown to the floor.

"Hart will be out in three years, I feel rather aggrieved by the short sentence."

Janine Edwards, a York survivor, added: "I have mixed feelings about it. Now I am just trying to put it behind me and get on with my life."

The two police officers who co-ordinated the investigation said Hart may have received five years, but the victims would suffer for life.

Detective Superintendent Peter McKay, of North Yorkshire Police, said: "His inability to accept he fell asleep is a major source of resentment to many of the victims. I don't wish to comment on the length of the sentence. There are some people standing behind me who do not think it is long enough."

Superintendent Nick Bracken, of British Transport Police, added: "The sentence will not bring back the lives of the ten men who died.

"Nor can it undo the pain and suffering of the hundreds of people affected, bereaved, injured, and the survivors and those who had to deal with the aftermath. These events were caused by one man's actions; selfish, dangerous actions."

by Megi Rychlikova

SLEEPY motorists were today on notice that they were as bad as drink-drivers if they took to the road.

Mr Justice Mackay made the warning at Leeds Crown Court as he sentenced Gary Neal Hart, 37, for falling asleep at the wheel and causing the Selby train crash.

He said that Hart had set out on a 150-mile trans-Pennine journey driving a Land Rover with a two-ton trailer and load in poor weather in the dark, mostly on monotonous motorways, when the only sleep he had had in the previous 24 hours was a short nap.

He had already driven 150 miles in the same 24 hours.

"An accident in the circumstances you chose to put yourself was almost inevitable," he told Hart, who said he did not need much sleep.

"Your arrogant claim which you maintained in evidence was that you were not like other people, you did not follow the same rules. It was rudely disproved by the events which followed and rejected rightly by the jury."

The judge said: "To take to the road in this condition was, in moral terms, little different to doing so when one's judgement is impaired by drink."

Hart had disregarded his body's warnings that he needed to rest and had been fighting sleep throughout the five miles he travelled along the M62. Then as he dozed, his Land Rover drifted for about 60 metres off the inside lane across the hard shoulder and on to the verge. "Still you slept," said the judge.

A "cruel set of coincidences and factors" then came together to create disaster.

He told Hart: "What happened was perhaps the worst driving-related accident in the UK in recent years. You were not just a cause of it. In my judgement, you were not a victim of the Selby train crash as you appeared to at times in interview and evidence want to portray it.

"You were the cause of it."

He jailed Hart, of Strubby, Lincolnshire, for five years concurrent for each of 10 offences of causing death by dangerous driving.

He also banned Hart from driving for five years and ordered him to take an extended driving test before he is allowed to drive unsupervised in future.

Updated: 11:48 Saturday, January 12, 2002