Drink-driver banned for ploughing into oncoming car

Michael Hay, from Taylors Field, Midhurst, pleaded guilty to drink driving and driving without due care and attention at Worthing Magistrates’ Court yesterday (Thursday, March 9).

The court heard how police were called to a two-car collision in Chichester Road in Midhurst just before 10.10pm on January 6.

It heard how Hay, 49, driving a Renault Clio, collided with a silver Mini Cooper after driving home from a local pub. He was three times over the drink-drive limit.

The driver of the Mini Cooper fractured her arm in the collision and needed plates and pins inserted in hospital. The passenger, the driver’s elderly mother, sustained deep bruising.

In a statement read by prosecutor Gaynor Byng, the injured driver said she was driving home from Chichester when she saw a pair of headlights on her side of the road. She said the oncoming vehicle swerved to get on the correct side of the road, but clipped something that forced it back into her path and the vehicles collided.

Hay was sentenced to a 12-month community order, 12 sessions for alcohol treatment, 10 days unpaid work, and a four-month curfew. He was banned from driving for two years and ordered to pay the court £170.

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