Jail for drug-driver who hit car

A dealer who took a cocktail of drugs then drove along a pavement at high speed, before smashing into another car and injuring the driver, was jailed for 14 months yesterday.

Christopher McBride admitted driving while unfit through drink or drugs on Feus Road, Perth, on January 21 2017.

His lawyer told Perth Sheriff Court: “Taking Valium on top of methadone is always going to be a cocktail for disaster.”

Sheriff William Wood initially banned McBride from driving for 27 months and placed him under a curfew for 27 weeks, as well as giving him 225 hours of community work.

The court was told yesterday that he had failed to complete the order, and had also committed several more offences, including shoplifting.

Sheriff Wood told him: “You have had a lot of leeway, but you haven’t managed to stay out of trouble.

“A custodial sentence is now the only alternative.”

Convicted drug dealer McBride, 29, of Low Road, Perth, was high when he lost control of his Ford Focus.

The driver of the other car, a 64-year-old woman, broke her wrist in the accident.

When he was arrested, McBride said: “I’ve only had my methadone.”

The sheriff said McBride was “a man who loads himself up with drugs and gets himself behind the wheel of a car, which is, to all intents and purposes, a one-tonne metal weapon”.