‘Scared‘ driver who clocked 120mph escapes prison sentence
Mansayshespedofftogetawayfrom car‘intimidating’himonmotorway
An ambitious young accountant who drove a high performance BMW at over 100 miles per hour on the hard shoulder of a busy motorway has avoided jail.
Wajhaht Akhtar, 22, had been “intimidated” by the occupants of another black BMW when he hit speeds of 120mph on the M9 near the Stirlingshire/Perthshire border, Stirling Sheriff Court was told yesterday (Thursday).
He slowed down only slightly – to 100mph – as he undertook other cars by using the hard shoulder, the court heard.
His driving, at 3.20pm on a Saturday afternoon last August, was described by a sheriff as “extraordinarily dangerous”.
Traffic police carrying out speed checks near the junction of the M80 and M9 near Stirling recorded the 120mph top speed on a hand-held laser as Akhtar’s BMW 3 Series 335D xDrive M Sport – which has a listed top speed of over 155mph and sells new at over £40,000 – went speeding past them.
Prosecutor Adrian Fraser said that the officers followed the BMW as it headed north and between junctions nine and 10 they could see that it was being driven on the hard shoulder, “undertaking” other vehicles.
Mr Fraser said: “My understanding is that the police estimated the speed of the accused’s vehicle at the time of the undertaking manoeuvre as being over 100 miles an hour.”
Police eventually managed to catch up with Akhtar and pull him over.
He told officers: “I was doing it out of scaredness. I was trying to get away.”
Road traffic lawyer Richard Freeman, defending, said that shortly before the police saw him, another black BMW with a driver and passengers in it had come up behind Akhtar and “intimidated” him by driving from lane to lane and pulling alongside him.
Mr Freeman said Akhtar had been scared by the “demeanour” of the occupants of the other BMW. He said: “This frightened him, and that’s why he took what he now appreciates was a very stupid decision to try to get away from that vehicle.”
The solicitor-advocate said that the case had caused Akhtar “great angst”.
He said: “He is a married man and an accountant with KPMG in Glasgow, a very high achiever with a BA in accountancy and in the final stages of taking his chartered accountancy exams. He is not a boy racer. He is not interested in speed.”
Akhtar, of Bearsden, Glasgow, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving on August 27.
Mr Fraser, the depute fiscal, said police had seen another black BMW driving fast on the motorway behind Akhtar, but that they had not been able to catch up with it.
He said: “The Crown can’t say one way or the other what its intentions were.”
Mr Fraser said he “could not confirm or refute” the defence’s claims Akhtar had been trying to get away from a car that had been menacing him.
Sheriff William Gilchrist said that if Akhtar had been racing, he would have jailed him.
He asked: “Since there were other vehicles there, why didn’t he just fit himself in amongst them, where he would have been entirely safe?”
Fining Akhtar, £2700, banning him from driving for 21 months, and ordering him to resit his test before getting back behind the wheel, the Sheriff told him: “Driving at that speed on the hard shoulder was an extraordinarily dangerous thing to do.”