'He feels terrible and is desperately sorry... he knows what it is like to lose someone through this'

A man whose father died in a car crash caused "life-changing" injuries to a taxi driver after he pulled out from a side road directly into his path.

Mark Leach was chatting with his friends while driving and failed to stop at give way signs, leaving a taxi driver with a broken collarbone and fractured vertebrae. Despite Leach having a previous conviction for drug driving, he was spared an immediate prison sentence.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that on August 30 last year, the victim was finishing his shift and remembered he had to pick up a friend of his daughter. After picking her up, he was driving along Cleveland Street in Birkenhead towards Hamilton Square when Leach, who didn't pay attention to the give way signs at the junction with Park Street, drove his Audi A4 out and crashed into him, reports the Liverpool Echo.

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Leach, 24, of Stansfield Avenue in Maghull, was said to have not looked both ways because he was busy talking to his friends in the car. Oliver Saddington, prosecuting, described how the driver recalled "lying in the road beside his taxi, seeing it badly damaged" in the aftermath and members of the public coming to his aid and attempting to apply a bandage to his head.

The injured driver was rushed to Aintree Hospital's major trauma unit and received 27 stitches to a head injury, as well as a further 10 to a laceration to his abdomen. The complainant was also left with a fractured vertebrae and a broken left collar bone, which required surgery.

He may still require a further operation in relation to this injury. His vehicle had to be written off as a result of the smash, and he has been unable to