A woman charged with involuntarily causing serious injury to her mother in a car accident has been acquitted after the police failed to prove that dangerous driving led to the crash.

The incident happened on July 18 at around 10.30am. Josette Vassallo, 22, from Dingli, was driving through Rabat towards Dingli – with her 57-year-old mother Josephine as a passenger – when she crashed into a light pole and then into a wall.

Traffic expert Mario Buttigieg said Ms Vassallo lost control of the vehicle due to some factor she had no control over. It could be she felt ill, he said, although there was nothing to say this was what occurred.

She could not remember anything about the accident except for her mother shouting: “Look out, look out!”

This was because she was distracted and not paying attention to her driving, Mr Buttigieg said in his report.

He said it did not look like she was driving dangerously because there were no brake marks, no skid marks and she drove straight into the pole. This led him to believe she may have felt ill. especially when considering it was a particularly hot day.

The driver, he added, did not take any evasive action although he could not ascertain the speed at which the car was moving.

Magistrate Neville Camilleri ruled that from the evidence produced it resulted that she was not driving dangerously.