HOUSEWIFE Madam Shanti Baskaralingam and her two children were walking along a pavement in Toa Payoh Lorong 8 in May when a lorry suddenly careened towards them.

The 32-year-old instinctively tried to shove her son, Sarugesh, 3, from the impending danger, only to get land in its path herself.

She was critically injured and spent the next 17 days in Tan Tock Seng Hospital with multiple fractures, cuts and a severed right thumb.

Sarugesh fractured his legs after he fell and was taken to KK Women's & Children's Hospital while Pratheepa, who was a few steps behind them, was unhurt.

The lorry driver, Goh Kok Keng, 35, on Monday told a district court that what happened that day was an accident.

'I didn't do it intentionally. I lost control of my vehicle,' he said with the help of a Mandarin interpreter.

He faced a single charge of causing grievous hurt to Sarugesh and Madam Baskaralingam through a negligent act when he could have been up against two separate charges - one for each of them.

District Judge Hamidah Ibrahim said: 'You're very lucky the prosecution put both into one charge. Anyway, they survived.'

Goh was fined $5,000 and banned from driving for six months.

He could have received up to two years' jail and a $5,000 fine.

The court heard that on May 16, Goh was driving his lorry on the left lane of the two-lane Toa Payoh Lorong 8.

When he arrived at a non-signalised T-junction at a carpark leading to Block 3A, he changed lanes and crashed into another lorry in the right lane.

His lorry then veered right, mounted a road kerb on the opposite side of the road and hit both Madam Baskaralingam and Sarugesh.

Seven months after her accident, life still has not returned to normal for Madam Baskaralingam.

'She is still not fully recovered yet,' her husband Mr Baskaralingam told The Straits Times on Monday.

He said she had almost recovered from her bodily injuries but her arms are still causing problems.

Her left arm was broken again after the metal pins in them were removed in an operation in August and her right arm is due for surgery in January.