The girl was thrown from her bike and seriously injured, but the 42-year-old — whose two children are around the same age as the cyclist she hit — failed to stop or help and didn't hand herself in to police for four days. County Court judge Gabriele Cannon on Friday said Nguyen's plea of guilty to failing to stop after an accident and failing to render assistance, her remorse and insight, good character and rehabilitative prospects meant she would be spared jail, with 150 hours of unpaid work the only condition attached to the community order.

Prosecutors previously submitted a community order was within the appropriate penalty range. Moments before Nguyen walked from court, Bicycle Network chief executive Craig Richards said a strong message should have been sent to drivers who fail to stop and help injured cyclists. "To get away with a non-custodial sentence for what is in effect four weeks' work is very light for the community standard," he said.

"We understand the young woman, when she was riding her bike, wasn't doing the right thing. "But the thing she did was fairly minor. The consequences for her were incredibly major. We look at the other side of it where the offence is fairly major and the consequences are fairly minor. The punishment here really doesn't fit the crime." There was no evidence to suggest Nguyen was responsible for the collision, the court heard. However, she pulled over only briefly and looked at her shattered windscreen and then looked back, according to one witness, and drove away. That night she telephoned a friend who advised she contact police. When Nguyen eventually handed herself in, she told police she didn't know at the time she had hit the girl.

"You left [the cyclist] for dead in circumstances where at the very least you ought to have know that she, being the person whom you had seen riding towards you on the bike, was seriously injured as a result of the collision," Judge Cannon told Nguyen. "While it is true she was assisted by others it was your primary obligation to do this." The judge said it was fortunate for both the girl and the driver that other motorists were "decent enough" and stopped to help. The girl suffered serious internal injuries. Judge Cannon acknowledged Nguyen panicked and was frightened after the crash, but said it defied belief that she wouldn't have known she had hit someone. But the judge found there was "no utility" in jailing Nguyen, who was remorseful and ashamed, wanted to apologise personally and had a strong work ethic, typified by the long hours she works in her nail salon business.

Mr Richards said prison would have been an appropriate penalty. Hit-run offences carry a maximum 10 years in jail. He said it was hard to accept Nguyen didn't know she had hit someone when strands of the girl's hair were embedded in the windscreen. "This is very upsetting for everyone in the bike-riding community to see someone hurt like that and to hear those details, it's incredibly upsetting. We say to everyone: please stop, please help," he said.