A mum has been banned from the road after narrowly avoiding a head-on collision with an HGV during a dangerous A90 overtake.
Chelsie Spencer forced an HGV driver to slam on his brakes when she carried out the frightening manoeuvre, pulling onto the wrong side of the A90 near Ellon.
The 24-year-old was “lucky” she managed to merge back into the right side of the road just in time as the lorry driver desperately tried to slow down.
Smoke was even seen coming from the large vehicle’s tyres and skid marks were left on the surface of the road during the incident, which was captured on a witness’ dashcam.
‘She’s actually very lucky’
Fiscal depute Andrew McMann told Aberdeen Sheriff Court the incident happened around 1pm on April 2 last year.
He said: “A witness believed that, due to oncoming traffic, the accused would not continue to carry out the overtake, however, she committed to doing so and indeed overtook two vehicles at that point when it was not safe to do so.
“This resulted in an oncoming driver realising it was dangerous and to avoid a collision he would have to decrease the speed of his vehicle.
“That vehicle was an HGV.
“In order to avoid a collision with the vehicle, he had to brake harshly to the point where there was smoke coming from the wheels and there were rubber skid marks on the carriageway.”
‘Could have ended disastrously’
A witness caught the near-miss on her dashcam and later contacted the police.
Spencer, of Cluny, pled guilty to a charge of dangerous driving.
Defence agent Chris Maitland said: “It’s accepted that the carrying out of the first overtake was unwise in the circumstances, and made all the worse by the carrying out of the second overtake which led to, it’s accepted, a near-miss.
“You can see from the dashcam footage that the gap closes between the two vehicles while the overtake is being carried out.
“It’s pretty clear from the near-miss she’s actually very lucky.”
Mr Maitland said Spencer had worked as a delivery driver but left the job and was now on benefits.
Sheriff Andrew Miller told Spencer: “It seems over this very brief period you made an ill-judged overtaking manoeuvre which could have ended disastrously and which constitutes dangerous driving.”
The sheriff banned Spencer from driving for a year and fined her £230.
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