A coroner says the man who caused a deadly cafe explosion that killed two people when his ute slammed into two large gas bottles was medically unfit to drive.

June 26, 2020

The man who crashed his ute into a Queensland cafe, sparking an explosion that killed two people and seriously injured more than a dozen others, should not have been behind the wheel, a coroner says.

Brian Andrew Scutt suffered an epileptic seizure and lost consciousness before veering off the road and slamming into the Serves You Right Cafe in Ravenshoe in June 2015.

The impact ignited two large gas bottles, causing a massive fireball, which killed cafe manager and mother-of-two Nicole Nyholt, 37, and 83-year-old grandmother Margaret Clark.

Twenty people were injured.

An inquest into their deaths has found Mr Scutt ignored family, friends and, most importantly, doctors’ warnings not to drive.

“On three separate occasions he did not heed the advice of medical practitioners not to drive,” coroner Nerida Wilson said in findings published late on Friday.

“Mr Scutt was not medically fit to drive at the time of the accident and should not then have held an unconditional drivers licence.”

His widow, Robyn Scutt, told the Cairns Coroners Court she had warned her husband not to drive in the days before the crash.

“I had a sit-down talk with him and I said: ‘Look, Brian, I’m really concerned about you driving and I am concerned that, you know, you might kill somebody’,” she said while giving evidence.

Mr Scutt suffered four documented seizures in the years leading up to the crash, the seven-day hearing held earlier this year was told.

By 2014, they met the clinical definition for epilepsy and Mr Scutt, then 60, should have disclosed his condition when he renewed his drivers licence.

But he failed to do so.

He also failed to properly inform his doctor, Kenneth Conolly, about the extent of the episodes, who in turn did not treat Mr Scutt for them, Ms Wilson said.

Mr Scutt was charged with dangerous driving cause death following the collision.

However, a court ruled him permanently unfit for trial on mental health grounds because of his dementia.

He died last year, aged 64, and did not give evidence at the inquest.

Ms Wilson said drivers should be reminded about their obligations to immediately report any medical events, including seizures and epilepsy, which may impact on their fitness to drive.

She also recommended that medical practitioners be better educated about how to report patients to the Transport Department when they deem a patient is unfit to drive.