A woman who nearly died in a head-on crash has admitted driving carelessly.
Sally-Anne Henderson was so badly hurt that she was unable to make it to court for sentencing, six months on from the accident near Kincardine O’Neil.
And the court heard that when she was pulled from the wreckage of her car, paramedics told her husband they did not think she would make it to hospital alive.
Henderson admitted allowing her Suzuki Swift to veer onto the wrong side of the A93 Aberdeen-Braemar road, into the path of Peter Chapman’s Renault Kangoo.
Police, fire service and ambulance were all scrambled to the scene on December 5, and both drivers had to be cut free from their vehicles.
Henderson – who had been on her way to visit her parents – came off far worse out of the pair, with life-threatening injuries.
Mr Chapman, meanwhile, sustained a heat laceration to his left knee which required surgery, and minor injuries.
Fiscal depute Christie Ward told the court that the pair were assisted by passers-by before the fire service arrived, with some reporting a strong smell of alcohol from Henderson’s car.
Defence agent Gregor Kelly told the court that Henderson, while unable to attend because of her physical condition, admitted driving without due care or attention.
He said the 52-year-old had only recently returned home from hospital after sustaining a broken pelvis and fractured legs, arms and vertebrae.
Mr Kelly said that Henderson, Old Dalkeith Road in Edinburgh, would “not be driving for some time” and had a “long hard road to recovery”.
He said that a blood sample from Henderson had been tested for alcohol and no trace had been found, so drink was not a contributory factor to her careless driving.
And he did speculate that a glass bottle of liqueur intended for her dad could have smashed and caused the odour that the witnesses had reported.
Mr Kelly said that an icy road surface could have caused Henderson to lose control of her car, but said she “had no idea” what had happened.
He said that she had been “devastated” by the incident and had an otherwise “unblemished” record, with a clean driving licence prior to the crash.
Mr Kelly said Henderson wished to apologise for any pain she had caused Mr Chapman.
Sheriff Graham Buchanan said he considered the incident as a “quite serious case of careless driving”.
He banned Henderson from driving for six months and fined her £700.
