A drink-driver who crashed his car while more than three times the legal limit claimed he felt pressurised into drinking when he stopped at a pub to use their toilets.
Craig Jack was warned yesterday that he had one last chance to avoid jail when he appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court and admitted committing his second drink-drive offence.
Sheriff Kenneth Stewart told the 26-year-old that he was incredibly lucky his stupidity didn’t kill anyone after he heard how Jack plunged his car into a field while extremely intoxicated.
And Sheriff Stewart said his only saving grace was the fact that after his accident Jack called the police to turn himself in.
The court heard that Jack had been on his way home to Peterhead from Aberdeen when he stopped in by a pub in Newburgh to use the toilet.
Solicitor Garry Sturrock said that his client thought it would have been rude of him to use the facilities without buying an alcoholic drink.
He said Jack then realised the football was being shown on the TV and had a few more to drink.
When he left the pub at around 11pm on July 9 this year he had 122 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath in his system. The legal limit is 35mcg.
Mr Sturrock told the court that although his client knew he would be over the limit he thought he was in a fit state to drive as he was “not stumbling or blacking out”.
However, shortly after leaving Newburgh, Jack, now of Whitehills Court, Ellon, crashed his Ford Fiesta into a field off the B90003 Ellon to Colliston Road.
Fiscal depute Sally McAuley said that the police control room received a phone call from Jack shortly after 11pm stating that he had driven off the road and that he had been drinking alcohol.
She said when officers arrived he was still inside the car and was smelling strongly of alcohol.
Sentencing the shop worker, who previously admitted the offence when he appeared from custody, Sheriff Stewart said: “This is the sort of case where the starting point for any sheriff is to decide whether you are going to jail. Now you were something like three and a half times the limit, you think you are ok to drive but you go off the road. If there had been another car you could have killed them. What you did do that made a difference as far as I am concerned was to contact the police. From the beginning you were honest with the police and that’s why I am prepared to give you a chance.”
Jack was placed under supervision for a year and ordered to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work in the community within the next six months. This was imposed as a direct alternative to custody. He was also disqualified from driving for four years and his car, valued at £4,000, was confiscated.