A Yukon Supreme Court judge said this morning he was sure a man who crashed into a bus stop will forever carry the burden of killing the man sitting on the bench.

'I'm satisfied that his remorse is genuine,' said Justice Leigh Gower as he spoke for nearly an hour before telling Robert Clifford Foster he's to be on a conditional sentence for the next 20 months. 'I'm satisfied that he will carry this burden for the rest of his life.'

Gower also noted the man's eight prior speeding tickets. Although most were dated, he said, they suggest a pattern of speeding for Foster.

At the 41-year-old Carcross man's sentencing hearing Tuesday morning, the court heard that Foster has confined himself to home and work since the July 22, 2003, fatal collision on Quartz Road. He has also withdrawn from the community in which he's usually very active.

He hasn't been sleeping well for months and was clearly devastated by what he'd done, a pre-sentence report said.

'Close to a year ago, July 22, I killed a man,' Foster told the judge yesterday.

'It's the most horrible thing I've ever done or been a party to. I can't change that it's happened. I can't bring him back or do anything for his family or anyone who was close to him.

'It's just a horrible thing.'

The clearly shaken Foster said there's 'no chance in hell' he'll reoffend.

'I'm sorry, unbelievably,' said Foster. 'If I could trade places with Mr. (Austin Avelar) Avrit, I would in a heartbeat.'

He told Gower he's a different person than who he was before he careened into Avrit.

'I certainly don't want to go to jail. I certainly don't want to lose the capacity to provide for my family ... but I have no control.'

The 67-year-old Avrit was sitting on the bench across from Wal-Mart, eating an ice cream cone, when the car struck him.

'He was apparently just a visitor travelling through town,' prosecutor David McWhinnie said of the dead man.

Tracking Avrit's family down in the United States proved difficult as he was estranged from them for the latter part of his life. They declined to write victim impact statements, the prosecutor said.

'He appears to have led a very solitary life,' said McWhinnie.

In reviewing an additional 16 criminal driving cases, Gower found that other courts, especially in B.C., have embraced conditional sentences for dangerous driving convictions, where warranted.

Changes to the sentencing rules in 1996 were a 'watershed' event, noted Gower. Those changes pushed for more conditional sentences in the face of high incarceration rates in Canada. In the western world, this country is second only to the United States in the number of people it jails.

Foster had pleaded guilty in mid-March to dangerous driving causing death and his sentencing hearing was put over to Tuesday morning.

Gower put the matter over this morning so he could consider the two hours' worth of submissions from the lawyers.

For the first six months, Foster will be under house arrest and permitted to leave only for work, church, emergencies and to get groceries four hours out of the week.

The following six months will see him under a 7:30 p.m. curfew.

As part of his 170 community service hours, Foster must write letters to the editors of both Whitehorse newspapers, publishing his crime and its effects.

He's also been told to prepare a safe-driving presentation for his co-workers at Mt. Sima, where he's the chief mechanic during the winter, as well as students at the Carcross school.

Foster is banned from drinking or getting behind the wheel for any reason. He's prohibited from driving for a further two years after the conditional sentence is up.

Last July 22, witnesses saw Foster in his Subaru Impreza headed north down Quartz Road in the inside lane going 'highway speeds' right past the 50 km/hr sign when he swerved to avoid a taxi turning left into the Wal-Mart parking lot.

At least one witness, and Foster himself, recalled seeing a pickup truck move to the outside lane, something else Foster could have been avoiding, the court heard.

He hit the brakes and turned the wheel, which led to him skidding across the road, into gravel and through the bus stop bench on which Avrit was sitting, said McWhinnie.

Avrit was killed instantly, and his body was thrown some 25 metres. The Subaru ended up on its roof in the middle of a walking trail along the Yukon River.

The RCMP's collision reconstructionist found Foster was going between 99 and 104 km/hr, and determined he would have been able to control his vehicle without leaving the road if he'd been going 20 km/hr slower.

Excessive speed was mostly to blame for the fatal collision, the police traffic expert concluded.

Speeding charges are no stranger to Foster, who's accumulated eight speeding tickets between 1982 and 2001.

Foster had a couple of drinks with friends at a local sports bar before he got in his car, and leaving him with half the legal driving limit in his blood stream.

Though he was arrested that day for dangerous driving, he was released without charges until the investigation concluded in late fall.

The prosecutor asked for between 16 and 20 months in jail, along with a three-year driving prohibition. The defence suggested the dangerous driver could serve his time in the community on a conditional sentence of two years or less.

A member of the Carcross fire and rescue team, Foster has worked 'countless volunteer hours' for various groups in the small community before cutting himself off, said his lawyer, Ed Horembala.

Thirteen friends and co-workers wrote reference letters for Foster, describing him as steady, a good family man, reliable and someone who promotes safety with his fellow employees.

Over the last two decades, he and his wife raised their two teenage boys in Carcross, though they've been living in Whitehorse during the winter so they can attend high school.

The defence lawyer pointed out the probation officer who wrote a pre-sentence report outlining the man's background and circumstances suggested a conditional sentence is warranted.