A police crash investigator told a fatal accident inquiry that the driver of a car which collided with two tourists did not react to the fact it was heading towards them.
Chris and Elaine Dunne from Glenfield, Leicester, were standing at the side of the A99 Wick-John O’Groats road at Auckengill when they were struck by Alice Ross’s vehicle.
Mrs Dunne, 30, was killed and her husband seriously injured.
The couple was on a cycling holiday in Orkney to mark their first wedding anniversary and were heading home at the time, the inquiry at Wick was told.
Giving evidence yesterday, crash investigator Constable Scot Lemmon said it would be fair to say that there had been no change in the vehicle’s speed or momentum as it suddenly veered to the right.
The vehicle then travelled 311ft along the opposite side of the road, mounting a verge and pavement and hitting the Dunnes before striking a wall and coming to rest in a field straddling a fence.
Mrs Dunne was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident on September 21, 2011.
Mr Dunne, an electronics engineer, received multiple injuries and was told he would never walk again.
However he proved doctors wrong by regaining the use of his legs.
Constable Lemmon said that there was no evidence that Mrs Ross’s car swerved suddenly to avoid a black cat which she had claimed had crossed the road in front of her.
He added it had not been possible to ascertain the speed of the Nissan Micra.
Mrs Ross did not realise she had hit the cyclists killing one of them until police broke the news to her, two hours after the accident.
The inquiry heard previously that she had been subject to brief blackout turns in recent years, one occurring a month before the tragedy.
Mrs Ross is due to give evidence to the inquiry on Thursday at a specially convened sitting in her home village of Lybster.