A DUDLEY driver blind in one eye who struggled to see out of the other has been locked up for three years after he knocked down and killed a much-loved grandfather.

“You drove when you could not see properly,” Judge James Burbidge QC told Peter Scriven as he described the tragic death of Arthur Fletcher as an “accident waiting to happen”.

He said it was clear the eyesight of 60-year-old Scriven had been a problem for a number of years and he had failed to accept his vision was inadequate.

Scriven should have been able to read a vehicle registration number from 20 metres, but tests afterwards revealed he could just see it from 3 metres meaning his driving posed a “substantial risk”.

Mr Fletcher was crossing Priory Road in Dudley to buy fish and chips when he was hit by Scriven's Nissan, throwing him into the other carriageway and into the path of another car.

Alexander Stein, defending Scriven, suggested he was either too proud or frightened to accept his eyesight was failing.

“His sight in one eye had completely failed and the other eye was not as it should have been,” said Mr Stein. “He was terrified he was going completely blind.”

Thomas Schofield, prosecuting, said since 2002, Scriven had been blind in the one eye and his sight in the other eye was deteriorating but he failed to notify the DVLA of the problem.

He said Scriven's driving licence was revoked after the eye test that followed the death of Mr Fletcher on December 10 last year.

But just two months later, he applied for his licence to be reinstated claiming he had no problems at all with his vision.

Mr Schofield told Wolverhampton Crown Court that Mr Fletcher, a father of two with two grandchildren, had been “vulnerable”.

Scriven, of Forest Road, admitted causing the death of 65-year-old Mr Fletcher by dangerous driving and he was further disqualified from driving for three-and-a-half-years.

The judge said it was “troubling” that he had tried to get back his licence, adding: “Mr Fletcher was there to be seen and you did not see him.”

Wendy Fletcher, the wife of the pensioner, said in a victim Impact statement that his passing had devastated the family and she had lost someone who was her best friend and soul mate.

She said they had been married for 47 years, he had recently retired from work and all their dreams of spending the future together had been shattered.

Steven Fletcher, her son, said he would never get over the pain of losing a father who had been a role model, while his sister Amanda Ward said she had lost a “very special man in my life”.

She said he was a man who would always go that extra mile to help in any situation, adding: “So many questions remain unanswered. My life will never be the same without my dad.”

Mr Stein told the court that Scriven had now been told by his optician he would need a cataract operation on his right eye and when that was done “it would work perfectly well”.

He said Scriven was full of genuine remorse for the hurt he had caused to the Fletcher family and stressed there had been no complaints at all about his driving before the tragic accident.