A son badly injured in a motorcycle crash allegedly caused when a car driver pulled out of a side road, told a jury how he had held the hand of his dying dad and had tried to reassure him he would be all right.
Darren Robertson, now 23, was riding pillion behind his 58-year-old father George Smith in Dunipace, Stirlingshire, in January 2019, when the incident occurred.
Barry McLean, 39, is said to have driven carelessly and caused the fatality and Mr Robertson's severe injuries by failing to carry out sufficient observations and failing to comply with giveway markings before driving his Saab 9-3 into the path of George Smith's Yamaha XVS motorbike on the A872 at Dunipace.
Mr Robertson, then a spray painter, said his own motorcycle had broken a clutch cable and so his father had picked up from work just two minutes before the crash, which occurred on a dark, damp evening, around 6.05pm on January 21 2019.
He told a jury at Falkirk Sheriff Court his father had been travelling with the traffic within the speed limit.
He said: "Being at the back of my father, directly behind him, my point of view is the back of his helmet and the surrounding areas at the sides.
"What I remember is that we were just driving forward, within the flow of the traffic. I was in a sort of daydream, basically, because I'm always safe with my father.
"That's one of the main things. Then for a split second there was a kind of blackout. The point of impact isn't actually something I remember.
"I remember just opening my eyes and lying on the roadside. My first reaction was to get my helmet off and I sat at the roadside and took a breath.
"I remember my father was calling, basically screaming at other people at this point, asking if I was OK."
He said he was "aware of people" being on the street, and he was asked to come over and reassure his father, who was lying on his back on the tarmac, that he was OK.
Mr Robertson said: "From there I was then was asked to remove his helmet, because someone was on the phone to the ambulance and they said it was safe to.
"I removed my jacket and put it underneath his head, and from that point I sat there and I held his hands while he was struggling to breathe and basically panting.
"I just kept holding his hand and reassuring him he was OK and that everything was going to be fine.
"[Then] he coughed up some sort of blood and I was pulled away by an assistant from the ambulance. I was separated from my father then."
He told prosecutor Harry Findlay, "It's difficult -- but it's easy to talk about, surprisingly."
Mr Robertson was taken to hospital and treated for three fractures of the spine, a ruptured testicle, and an air bubble in a vein, close to his heart.
He said he had been aware his father was "struggling" after the accident but hadn't realised his dad's injuries were so serious.
In hospital, while heavily sedated, he was told he had died.
He said: "I remember a doctor saying he was sorry to tell me this but my father didn't make it from the scene.
"I was on medication and drowsy to the point where I constantly forgot that my father had passed away.
"From when the doctor mentioned it to me, that same thought kept going out my mind, in an out, in and out, throughout the night."
An oncoming motorist, Dorothy Forbes, 65, a counsellor and psychotherapist, said she was driving south down A872 at the time of the accident, which occurred at its junction with Ingleston Avenue, Dunipace.
She said she did not see any motorcycle coming north -- the direction in which Mr Robertson and his father were travelling -- but she did see McLean's car coming out of Ingleston Avenue.
She said: "It came out [onto the A872] faster that I would have anticipated."
Ms Forbes said she became aware there had been an accident, McLean's car pulled onto her side of the road and appeared to be zig-zagging as he seemed to struggle to control it, and then stopped in front of her.
She stopped too, and saw Mr Smith lying "prostrate" on the road, about six feet from her driver's door.
McLean, of Denny, denies, causing Mr Smith's death by careless driving.
In answer to questioning by McLean's solicitor, Gordon Addison, Ms Forbes agreed that after the crash she had asked a police officer if Mr Smith's lights had been working, because she had not noticed his headlights.
Earlier, Mr Robertson told Mr Findlay, the depute fiscal, that his father had always stressed the importance of riding with lights on, even in daylight.
The jury heard Mr Smith's bike, which was named the Drag Star, was all black, and Mr Smith, known as Geordie, who came from Stirling, was wearing black motorcycle clothing and a black open-faced helmet.
The trial, before Sheriff Christopher Shead and jury, continues.
