Any road accident involving serious injury is a tragedy but one where the driver deliberately does not stop is a crime.

Hit-and-run accidents involve physical pain and agony for the innocent victims, such as five-year-old Dan Bishop from Hollingdean in Brighton.

They are made worse by the fact that in so many instances, including this, the driver is never traced.

All too often, drivers get away with it and do not know what happened to their victims.

The one who knocked over Dan never knew how his leg was broken in two places and the skin torn from his foot.

He never heard of the long months of recovery and the traumas both Dan and his family had to go through.

Dan had to go to school in a wheelchair once he had left hospital.

He also needed a great deal of medical attention.

Even now he hates crossing the road and gets panicky when he hears a car. More than a year after the accident, his foot is still swollen.

Dan will be scarred for life and still needs another operation to reshape his foot.

It is hard to think that anyone could drive away from the scene knowing he had left a young boy screaming in agony in the road.

But this driver did and may it be on his conscience for the rest of his life.