The court heard Goulty drank two lagers before he drove his silver Vauxhall Astra at 64mph in a residential 30mph limit area before crashing into 69-year-old Sarwar Mohammad’s Peugeot Expert Tepee taxi.
Mohammad, of Willow Brook Road in Leicester, who had been driving the taxi and admitted the same offences, was handed a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and told he must do 100 hours of unpaid work.
Prosecutor Steven Bailey told the court Brighton did not know the Sidsaffs, who had come to Leicester for the Radio 2 in the Park music festival, but they shared a taxi because they were going in the same direction.
Brighton, who was from the city, had been out with her friends celebrating her 60th birthday.
Bailey said the collision happened as a result of the “combined bad driving of Thomas Goulty and Sarwar Mohammad”, while the taxi was making a right turn towards Westfield Road across the central reservation of the dual carriageway.
Goulty had been out in the city and sent someone a message minutes before the crash saying he was “just out having a couple of beers”, and in a roadside test immediately after the crash tested positive for alcohol in his breath, but later assessments could not conclude that he was over the driving limit.
Bailey said Goulty’s speed was “excessive”, up to 64mph (102km/h) on approach and 55mph at the point of impact.
“He had left himself little or no calculation time and any braking was far too late,” he said.
“He drove too quickly for the road and its conditions, about twice the speed limit, having taken alcohol and in the dark.”