Oil worker disqualified after driving on hard shoulder

A motorist hurtled past another vehicle on the hard shoulder of a motorway slip road on the outskirts of Perth.

Andrew Marr’s Ford Ranger kicked up stones as he passed the other car, cracking its windscreen, as he drove from Broxden towards the Friarton Bridge.

Perth Sheriff Court heard that the two-lane road splits into slip roads, with the outside lane for Edinburgh to the south and the inside for traffic heading to Dundee.

Depute fiscal Tina Dickie said: “At 4.45pm the complainer was on the motorway just south of the Friarton Bridge, heading north. He was accompanied by his partner and his 10-month-old daughter.

“He became aware of the accused’s vehicle overtaking on the hard shoulder. As it passed his vehicle debris was thrown into the road and hit the windscreen of the complainer’s vehicle, cracking it.”

She added that the complainer had been driving at around 65mph.

Solicitor John McLaughlin, defending, said: “He saw the slip road coming up and didn’t realise he was coming onto the hard shoulder.

He added that the oil worker needed his licence to get to and from Aberdeen at short notice for work, and to care for his mother, who has suffered a stroke.

Marr, of Forfar, admitted driving dangerously on the M90 by undertaking a car driving in the inside lane by using the hard shoulder and causing debris to kick up and strike the other vehicle on May 28 last year.

Sheriff Lindsay Foulis banned the 29-year-old from the roads for 22 months and until he sits the extended driving test, and fined him £1,600.