Spared ban, the drunk in parked Tesla who feared he would bump into ex-wife
A BUSINESSMAN who swigged whisky at the wheel of his parked Tesla escaped a driving ban after claiming he drank out of fear of bumping into his estranged wife.
Simon Hayes, 50, was almost three times the alcohol limit when police found him in a drunken slumber at 10.35am in a car park a mile from the £ 500,000 family home he had spent the preand
‘Eyes were glazed, speech slurred’
vious day clearing out, a court heard.
Father- of-four Hayes, who runs a recruitment firm in Wilmslow, Cheshire, said he had left work at 10am on a Monday after a ‘meltdown’.
He had parked his £58,000 Tesla Model Y to delay going home and only then started drinking. Police received a report of a man asleep in the driver’s seat.
Hayes failed a breath test and was arrested. He admitted being drunk in charge of a motor vehicle in September faced disqualification. But Crewe magistrates merely imposed a ten-point penalty on his licence after hearing he was embroiled in a bitter break-up from his wife.
He was seen leaving court with his current girlfriend.
Tanya Berridge-Burley, prosecuting, told magistrates that officers went to the public car park in Wilmslow after a report of a driver seen ‘ slumped behind the wheel with an injury to his elbow’.
‘It was necessary to bang hard on the window to rouse the male,’ she said. ‘He appeared to be very disorientated. He wound the window down and officers could immediately smell intoxicants.
‘His eyes were glazed, his speech was slurred.
‘There was an unopened pack of beer on the passenger seat. He was unsteady on his feet as he walked to the police vehicle.’ A part- drunk bottle of Haig whisky was also found in the car, she said.
Hayes failed a breath test and was taken to a police station where a further test showed he had 96 micrograms of alcohol in 100ml of breath – the legal limit is 35. For Hayes, Paul Hodgkinson said: ‘ He is going through a very difficult divorce, not one of his choosing. [The day before the incident] the defendant had gone through a very painful day clearing out belongings from the family home.
‘The children were incredibly upset. On the Monday... one of his children was refusing to go to school. He said, “I cannot go into work today”. He was not in a drunken state. He basically had a breakdown.
‘He drove to the car park which is in walking distance of where he lives. His wife still had access to the family home. Because they were emptying the family home and it was an acrimonious split, the defendant could not go to his home because he would have met his wife and things would have gotten into trouble.
‘He thought discretion was the better part of valour so he stayed in the car park and he began to drink the whisky.
‘This is not a defendant who has a problem with alcohol. He made a terrible mistake.’
Hayes was also fined £960, plus a further £484 in costs and victim surcharge.