Pregnant crash mum sees driver locked up

and said the defendant told him: “I was going too fast, I couldn’t stop.”

Mr Hussey said: “He heard the sound of a child crying and went to the other car. The woman had managed to get out with her daughter and both were sitting at the roadside, very distressed and upset.”

In a victim statement read to court, the mum-of-three said the incident, which happened at 10pm that night, had a massive impact on her life.

She said the injury to her knee meant she was no longer able to go on family walks and she was unable to wear skirts because she did not want anyone to see the scars.

She continued: “Ella will not get in a small car and she was having nightmares. If another car gets close she grabs on to anything and starts to scream.

“She was lucky as she had only whiplash and bruises, but she will not sleep in her own room because of the nightmares and shares with her brother.”

She said her partner had to reduce his hours at work to look after the family and had suffered heart problems because of the stress.

Carolan, 20, of Blundell Grove, Hightown, pleaded guilty to a charge of dangerous driving.

Arthur Gibson, defending, said he was a “very stupid young man”, who had carried out an “inherently dangerous manoeuvre”.

He said Carolan, who was left with two leg fractures after the crash, had expressed remorse from the start.

Mr Gibson said: “He does not seek to downplay the seriousness of what he did.

“The incident has brought home to this young man the dangers of driving a motor vehicle.

“It was a serious case of bad driving. There were serious injuries caused, but in the main it does appear that there has been recovery and for- tunately this lady gave birth normally to a healthy child.

“He made a catastrophic error of judgement.”

Sentencing Carolan to 14 months in a young offenders’ institute, Judge Robert Warnock said it was “sheer good fortune” that the injuries suffered by Ms Flannery and her daughter were not worse.

He said: “Both victims have made a physical recovery but not surprisingly, they remain traumatised at what they went through at your hands.”

Carolan was also banned from driving for 37 months.