A white van driver who tried to “police” the actions of a convoy of supercars on the NC500 found himself in the dock after crashing into one of them.
Jason Webber swerved his white Nissan van onto the opposite carriageway to stop the high-performance vehicles overtaking him on the A832 near Loch Maree.
But the delivery man’s “obnoxious” actions ended up causing an accident when he accelerated into the path of a McLaren as it attempted to pass him by.
Webber, 49, appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court to admit a single charge of careless driving on April 5 of last year.
Fiscal depute Robert Weir told the court it was between 10am and 11am when a witness travelling west on the A832 between Kinlochewe and Kerrydale described being overtaken by a white van, followed by a convoy of supercars.
He said the first vehicle in the convoy had begun to approach the van, which was travelling at approximately 50mph.
Van ‘swerved’ onto opposite carriageway
“It attempted to overtake the van at the first opportunity, at which point the van has swerved onto the other side of the road.”
The fiscal depute told Sheriff Eilidh MacDonald: “They tried to overtake three or four times. On each occasion, the van swerved into the opposite carriageway.”
When the vehicles reached a stretch of single-track road, witnesses saw Webber’s van pull into a passing place and come to a stop.
Mr Weir said the McLaren had seen this as “an opportunity to overtake” and had pulled out accordingly, at which point Webber “accelerated directly into his vehicle at an angle”
Police were contacted and went to Webber’s home, where he confirmed he had been driving the vehicle at the time.
When he was cautioned he replied that the other driver was “not exactly telling the truth”.
Van driver ‘annoyed’ about NC500 supercars
After listening to the circumstances Sheriff MacDonald noted: “He was annoyed about supercars on the NC500.”
Webber’s solicitor David Patterson confirmed that his client, who was working as a delivery driver at the time, had “tried to police the road himself”.
He added: “He now understands it isn’t his role to do so.”
“He recalls hearing the convoy of supercars before seeing them.
“He has put himself in the middle of the road, he is just being obnoxious.”
He conceded that his client ought to have simply contacted the authorities if he had concerns about how the cars were being driven.
Mr Patterson told the sheriff that the eventual collision had been the result of his client misreading the situation as he pulled into the passing place.
He said the van driver had thought the McLaren was pulling in behind him and, in an effort to avoid a fight, had decided to pull off just as the other vehicle came round him.
Ashamed and remorseful
“He is completely ashamed and completely remorseful,” Mr Patterson said.
Sheriff McDonald told Webber, of Blackwell Avenue, Culloden: “This type of obnoxious driving where you think you can control what everybody else on the road is doing is really not good.”
The sheriff said that despite an initial instinct to disqualify Webber she was instead going to award him nine penalty points – meaning he will need to “drive very carefully” in future.
She also fined him £600.
