The jury in the trial of the driver accused of causing the deaths of 10 men in the Selby rail crash was tonight sent home after more than two hours of deliberations.
The seven women and five men were sent out to consider their verdicts after Mr Justice Mackay completed his summing-up in the trial of Gary Hart at Leeds Crown Court.
Hart, 37, denies 10 counts of causing death by dangerous driving following the crash between a GNER express passenger train and a fully laden coal train near the village of Great Heck, North Yorkshire, on February 28th.
The jury has heard how Hart's Land Rover, which was towing a trailer carrying a Renault car, veered off the M62 motorway before ending up on the East Coast main railway line.
Moments later the vehicle was hit by the London-bound express which was derailed and then crashed into the freight train.
The prosecution allege Hart fell asleep at the wheel after a night without sleep on the phone to Ms Kristeen Panter - a woman he had "met" eight days earlier on the internet.
Today the judge told the jury the two trains and the Land Rover "converged like the Titanic with the iceberg" to produce the crash.
He said Hart's speeding offences and conviction for using a stolen MoT certificate and vehicle excise licence should not count against him.
"You should treat him today as in effect a man of good character," the judge said.
Referring to the telephone calls Hart had with Mrs Panter, the judge added: "What they did was lawful and was their own business. This is a criminal court, not a court of morals.
"But what does matter is the time they spent doing it and the effect that time might have had, would have had, on his state of alertness and fitness to drive at dawn on Wednesday morning.
"That is the most important issue you have to decide," the judge said.
The judge went to tell them: "You must have thought like everyone has thought `if only things had been different' as you heard the evidence unfold before you."
The jurors will continue their deliberations tomorrow.
PA