A “HAPPY, joyful and caring” teenager died instantly when he was hit by a car driver travelling at “excess speed”.

Budding mechanic Joshua Fletcher, from Newport, was crossing the city’s Southern Distributor Road on the afternoon of Friday, October 16, 2020, when he was hit by William Davies’ Ford Focus.

The 16-year-old had been on his way to college at the time, and was cycling across the road near the Blaina Wharf pub, at the southern end of Usk Way.

At an inquest into the teenager’s death on Tuesday, a police crash investigator said Mr Davies had been driving at 48mph when the crash happened, on a stretch of road where the speed limit is 40mph.

Police collected dashcam footage and carried out reconstructions at the scene, finding Joshua had started crossing the westbound carriageway when the traffic lights for vehicles travelling straight ahead were still on green.

Constable Richard Wyatt, a crash investigation specialist, said stopped traffic in a filter lane would have caused a “zone of invisibility” for Mr Davies in his vehicle, which would have been 4.2 metres from the point of impact when Joshua became visible.

Despite the driver’s “quick reaction” to the hazard, he crashed into Joshua and the Ford came to a stop more than 24 metres further down the road.

Measurements of tyre marks and analysis of dashcam footage both suggested the car was travelling at around 48mph when it was around 42 metres from the point of impact.

In written evidence read out to the court, driver Mr Davies said he “didn’t have any time to react, it all happened in a split second”.

Joshua suffered multiple injuries, including a fatal skull fracture, coroner Caroline Saunders said.

Witness evidence and police investigations found the teenager had been wearing a raised hooded top and listening to music on headphones at the time, and had not been wearing a helmet.

The coroner accepted PC Wyatt’s view that Mr Davies would not have been able to stop in time, given when Joshua became visible, if the driver had been travelling at 40mph.

But she said his “excess speed… has more than minimally contributed to Joshua’s death”.

Joshua, meanwhile, had “decided to cross a busy road when it wasn’t safe to do so, [while he was] distracted by headphones and not wearing a helmet”.

Ms Saunders recorded a conclusion that the teenager died in a road traffic collision and his death had been caused by “a combination of Joshua failing to cross the road safely, not heeding oncoming traffic or the traffic lights, and the excess speed at which the car was being driven”.

She extended her condolences to Joshua’s family and friends.