Driver guilty of involuntary killing biker • Street name confusion delays case by four years

A 28-year-old driver was fined €5,000 and sentenced to 480 hours of community service after he was found guilty of causing the involuntary death of Michael Sciberras in October 2011.

A biker, Sciberras was on his way to meet friends for a daytrip to Sicily when the head-on collision between the motorcycle and Clive Tanti’s Chrysler.

The incident occurred in Valletta Road, Attard, at around 3.20am. Sciberras was on his way to the Valletta Harbour, where he and his friends would then catch the ferry to Pozzallo and spend the day touring with their motorbikes.

The impact between the two vehicles was such that Sciberras was thrown off his bike. His body was found five hours later by an AFM crew, trapped in the branches of a tree.

Tanti, then 23, was hospitalised suffering serious injuries.

In the sentence handed down today by Magistrate Joe Mifsud, Tanti was ordered to pay €5,000 and carry out community work.

The magisterial inquiry found that both Tanti and Sciberras had well exceeded the 80km/h driving limit in the area, although Tanti was found to have been driving on the wrong side of the lane.

It was only in 2015 that Tanti had been notified of the charges: it took four years to ascertain whether the incident took place on Valletta Road or Mdina Road. The prosecution's final correction was done in April 2015. As a result of this, a number of charges were dropped because they were time-barred.

In his sentence the Magistrate made an appeal for road safety: “Road safety affects everyone.  It affects whether people can go to the park or walk to school, whether elderly people can get to the shops, whether people can take up cycling to get to work or get fit, and whether families feel safe to get around their neighbourhoods.

“For some people, it changes everything.  Road crashes and casualties end lives too soon, rip families apart, leave communities reeling in shock and victims feeling alone and without hope.”