A hard reminder this week of why speed on public roads has no forgiveness in it. Lewis Baker, a 35-year-old mechanic from Milton Keynes, England, was sentenced to 15 months behind bars and hit with a 10-year driving ban after a crash that killed his brother-in-law, Jason Wallis, 31.
The two were riding matching Yamaha R1s, kitted out in matching leathers, on the A421 near Tingewick, Buckinghamshire, back in September 2023. Camera footage showed Baker had topped out at 178 mph and was still doing 120 when the bikes went down — Wallis trying to undertake, Baker trying to pass a car at the same moment. Wallis was killed. Baker survived with a broken thigh.
Judge Jonathan Cooper didn’t mince words at Aylesbury Crown Court, telling Baker that kind of speed belongs on a track, not the public road.
Wallis’s mother spoke outside court about the toll this has taken on her family — a rider she said had been in the saddle since age seven, with a clean record and a real sense of responsibility on the road, right up until that day.