A WOMAN accused of causing the death of a Hampshire cyclist through careless driving said she “couldn’t have done more” to notice him before he died.

Sophie Whitmarsh said she didn’t see 70-year-old William Logan seconds before he collided with her blue Audi at Kitnoks Hill in Curdridge.

Mr Logan, from Eastleigh, died at the scene on the A334 between Shedfield and Botley last April when Whitmarsh drove across from Reading Room Lane to enter Outlands Lane on the other side of the road.

Giving evidence at Southampton Crown Court yesterday she told jurors that she didn’t notice Mr Logan until she had pulled out of the junction on her way to Kitnoks Farm.

The prosecution allege that Whitmarsh was responsible for the accident.

When prosecutor Simon Edwards asked if Whitmarsh, 25, still maintained that she didn’t see him, she replied: “not until I heard a scream and looked out my right window.”

She said: “I wish I had seen him because then we wouldn’t be here now.”

She added: “I looked absolutely everywhere I could. I couldn’t have done more. I’m very careful, very competent.”

Earlier she said she knew the junction well and had taken that route to Kitnoks Farm ever since she was a child to see her horse.

Whitmarsh then said that Mr Logan’s body “merged entirely with the background”.

She said she was “completely startled” by the presence of Mr Logan hitting her car despite the prosecution saying he had been wearing a high-visibility jacket as well as a crash helmet and that visibility was good.

Whitmarsh, of Wylye Close, West End, denies causing death by careless driving.

Proceeding.