Drink driver hit 145mph after party
ASCAFFOLDER who drove at up to 145mph on the hard shoulder of a motorway in a bid to get back to Birmingham after a party has been jailed.
At one point Robert McDougall, who was over the drink drive limit, waved his hand out of the window as he sped along pursued by police.
McDougall, aged 27, of Hurlingham Road, Kingstanding, admitted aggravated vehicle taking and having no insurance and was sentenced to 16 months and banned from the roads for two years.
Glyn Samuels, prosecuting at Birmingham Crown Court, said that at around 10.30am on June 24 last year worried members of the public had contacted the police to report someone driving “erratically” heading north along the M5 in Somerset.
A patrol car then saw the Audi being driven by the defendant near to junction 20.
McDougall drove off the motorway at junction 19 before, possibly realising he was being followed, going back on to the M5.
An officer saw him “weaving” across all three lanes and then moving on to the hard shoulder while driving in excess of 120mph.
He then continued on the hard shoulder before going on to a feeder road for the M49 before swerving back on to the M5, driving at 140mph and causing a number of vehicles to brake. McDougall then went between junctions 17 and 16 at between 120 and 140mph.
“The officer was driving at 145mph but was not catching the vehicle,” said Mr Samuels.
The defendant did slow down to about 70mph when “for some reason” he made the hand gesture in the second lane.
By this time a second police vehicle had taken up the pursuit and as the two police vehicles tried to box him in, one of them clipped the Audi causing it to spin around 360 degrees and stop on the hard shoulder. The chase had lasted about 11 minutes.
McDougall said he had been to a party in the south west where he had drunk a couple of bottles of wine and smoked some cannabis and had taken the keys to the Audi, worth £20,000, which belonged to someone else, when he realised he could not get a lift. He said he was glad he was stopped “because I might have killed someone.”
Judge Mark Wall QC said at the time he was stopped McDougall was “significantly” over the limit and that his driving had been “outrageously dangerous.”
Richard Bannister, defending, said: “He drunk too much. There was no way he could get back to Birmingham and he took the person’s car.”