The court earlier heard<\/a> how the two experts disagreed on Rasmussen\u2019s estimated speed on impact, which Abbott said was 85km\/h or more and Wilson said was at least 93km\/h.<\/p>\nWhat was also in dispute was that the woman was able to see Rasmussen from Nikau St, with the police alleging she didn\u2019t look before pulling out from the stop sign.<\/p>\n
\u2018Obviously\u2019 checked left and right<\/p>\n
The woman told the court she was driving home via Nikau St and stopped at the stop sign before the intersection.<\/p>\n
She let another car pass that was coming from the \u201csame direction\u201d as Rasmussen, before continuing through the intersection.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat sort of visual checks, if any, did you make at the stop [sign]?\u201d her lawyer Anton Heyns asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI obviously did my left and right checks, which is why I stopped for the car to go through,\u201d the woman replied.<\/p>\n
She did not remember the impact, but a new detail about the crash had come back to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just remember spinning.\u201d<\/p>\n
She remembered spinning around in her car in the intersection. The next thing she remembered was getting out of the car and seeing Rasmussen injured on the ground.<\/p>\n
In a police video interview from the day of the crash, which was played in court yesterday, the defendant told the interviewing officer she \u201calways\u201d stopped at stop signs.<\/p>\n
Apart from this, police prosecutor Luke Foley pointed out, she had not mentioned looking left and right in her first police interview.<\/p>\n
When Foley asked why she had \u201ccome up with\u201d these new details, she said she was in shock directly after the crash.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the last two years some of the events have come back to me. … It\u2019s not something I\u2019ve come up with since then.\u201d<\/p>\n
A messy footwell and reclined seat<\/p>\n
The court heard there was a mess, including a pack of cigarettes, a water bottle and fly spray, left in the driver\u2019s footwell of the woman\u2019s car after the crash.<\/p>\n
Foley suggested the mess was there before the crash.<\/p>\n
The defendant denied that, saying the clutter had landed there when the car spun after the collision.<\/p>\n
Foley asked whether the woman drove with her back against the seat, to which she responded yes, she always drove with a straight back as she was a pianist.<\/p>\n
But when he pointed out her driver\u2019s seat was photographed after the crash \u201cfar back\u201d and reclined, she said she had leaned forward while driving.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou stopped for the car … but you didn\u2019t do any left and right checks before moving out after that car, did you?\u201d Foley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t recall,\u201d she replied. \u201cI am a vigilant driver and I always perform my checks.\u201d<\/p>\n
She ended her evidence by giving her \u201cdeepest\u201d condolences to Rasmussen\u2019s family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m extremely sorry for your loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
The woman\u2019s evidence concluded a two-day judge-alone trial.<\/p>\n
Judge Terry Singh told the court he needed to read over the expert evidence and get additional information from the lawyers before he could give his verdict.<\/p>\n
The judge indicated his verdict will be delivered in about a month.<\/p>\n
Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She\u2019s currently based in Auckland covering justice related stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before court began, the woman was sitting as she was yesterday \u2013 tucked in a corner of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1117,36671,51,11519,9349,23552,3549,6435,19552,15037,71,3375,101,424,33260,111,43,139,69,1118,675,174574,9979,8808,18460,312,7806,14446,1324,1120,1361,223,26951,3807,1354],"class_list":["post-434848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-accused","tag-always","tag-auckland","tag-causing","tag-checks","tag-claimed","tag-crash","tag-does","tag-driver","tag-fleeing","tag-from","tag-killed","tag-left","tag-life","tag-motorcyclist","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-police","tag-rasmussen","tag-right","tag-running","tag-sam","tag-says","tag-sign","tag-stand","tag-stop","tag-takes","tag-that","tag-the","tag-vigilant","tag-west","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}