A JURY has watched an in-car recording of the moment an unmarked police car driven by an officer from Stourbridge hit a student at 50mph as he dashed onto a pedestrian crossing as the ‘green man’ was flashing.

Pc Vaughan Lowe's windscreen shattered when he hit 24-year-old Zhang Xuan Wei as he crossed the outside lane of the A34 New Town Row in Birmingham, Warwick Crown Court heard.

The Birmingham City University student was flung into the bus lane after being hit by the unmarked police BMW on April 4 2012, and he died of his devastating injuries in hospital the day after.

Lowe, aged, 43, a traffic officer from Stourbridge - based at the West Midlands Police traffic unit in Aston, has pleaded not guilty to causing Wei’s death by careless driving.

Prosecutor Graham Reeds QC told the jury Wei had left his flat with a friend at around 7pm to get a take-away from the nearby Newtown shopping centre.

To get there they had to cross the inbound carriageway of the A34 New Town Row dual carriageway, up some steps and then across the outbound carriageway, where there were two lanes and a bus lane.

As he and his friend approached the traffic lights of the crossing to cross the second part of the road the light changed from a steady green to a flashing green.

Meanwhile Lowe and his colleague were responding to a call that a vehicle, which had failed to stop for other officers, had been sighted again.

That had been designated as requiring an immediate response, and Lowe and his colleague activated their blue light as they decided to deploy themselves.

Pc Lowe began by driving along the bus lane of the outbound carriageway in New Town Row before moving to the outside lane where the BMW reached 62mph.

Mr Reeds said: “As he approached the crossing the traffic lights were initially displaying red against him. As the traffic lights changed from red to flashing amber the speed of the car was in the region of 62mph.

He explained that at the crossing as the pedestrian light changes from green to flashing green, the light for traffic changes from red to flashing amber, and he added: “At this point Pc Lowe was around 75 metres from the crossing.

"Pc Lowe’s speed reduced to 54mph and it reduced further to around 52mph as he entered into the controlled area.”

Mr Reeds said for traffic the controlled area is shown by the zig-zag lines which always start 24.8 metres from the actual crossing – and any pedestrian on a crossing before a car enters that area has priority.

He added: “There were no pedestrians in the process of crossing and none that he could see waiting to cross, so he made the decision to drive through the crossing without any further substantial decrease in speed.”

But Mr Reeds said the layout of the crossing was unusual, in that the opposite carriageway is on a lower level, so someone crossing that side cannot be seen by traffic on the outbound side.

Steps leading from the central reservation come straight out to the kerb, so a person cannot be clearly seen until they are at the kerb waiting to cross.

Mr Reeds continued: “In Mr Zhang’s case he did not stand and wait, but walked or jogged straight onto the crossing, and was not visible to Pc Lowe until a collision was inevitable and unavoidable.

“Pc Lowe braked, but the prosecution say the speed at the time of the collision was between 48 and 50mph.

“It caused Mr Zhang very serious injury from which he died the next day in hospital."

The court was played a CCTV recording from the police car’s internal system of the officer’s approach to the crossing and of the impact and Pc Lowe’s reaction to it before getting out of the police car.

Mr Reeds added: “Pc Lowe drove too fast on the approach to the crossing, and that therefore his driving fell below the standard of a competent and careful driver.

“Once Pc Lowe entered the controlled area at a speed of about 50, it was unlikely he would have been able to stop the car before he reached the point of impact.

“To approach a red light at that speed and to fail to slow down to a speed to deal with any foreseeable hazard is careless – and one foreseeable hazard is that a pedestrian will come onto the crossing within seconds of the pedestrian light changing from green to flashing green.

“A careful and competent motorist would modify his speed in order to deal with the possibility of somebody going onto the crossing.”

Mr Reeds said the law does not require a trained officer to observe the speed limit in certain circumstances, and it was accepted Lowe was responding to a properly-graded incident.

He added: "But it was not an emergency where there was a danger to life or limb. He was entitled to exceed the speed limit, but what he was not entitled to do was to drive carelessly.”

When Lowe was questioned he said there was no-one waiting to cross when he made the decision to proceed, but he acknowledged he was aware of the layout of that crossing and that it was not unknown for people to run in front of cars to beat the lights.

Mr Reeds added: “We say it’s reasonably foreseeable a pedestrian might start to cross a crossing as the green man begins to flash, and the regulations provide for this very scenario.

“Mr Zhang started to use the crossing a split second before the entry of the car into the limits, and he is therefore entitled to be accorded precedence.”

The trial continues.