Dramatic video footage shows a motorist parking his vehicle on the M6 and cheating death by walking within inches of passing cars and lorries.
Andrew Griffiths, 45, was reported to police after stunned eyewitnesses saw his Vauxhall SUV veering across all three lanes of the northbound carriageway in Cumbria on August 6 last year, Carlisle Crown Court heard.
At times, Griffiths’s vehicle completely left lane three and collided with the central reservation barrier as an onlooker provided a running commentary to a call handler.
North of Junction 36, Griffiths then parked up on chevron markings between a slip road and lane one, got out of his vehicle and stepping perilously close to passing vehicles, including HGVs.
“This man is in danger,” the witness stated, yelling to Griffiths: “Get out of the road.”
Griffiths then returned to his SUV, pulling directly into the path of a campervan before once again careering across motorway lanes, near Tebay, in worsening wet weather conditions.
The witness formed the opinion Griffiths was drunk but police breath and drug wipe tests proved negative. A urine sample revealed the presence of metabolised morphine and codeine which, the prosecution accepted, could have come from an overuse of co-codamol.
Griffiths spoke of taking an extra 50mg of antidepressant sertraline amid confusion over whether he had consumed an earlier dose, and also took co-codamol. He left work in Preston due to feeling “funny”, had a Red Bull and headed for home but remained on the M6.
He was handed an 18-month community order after admitting charges of dangerous driving and driving while unfit through drugs; and received a driving ban.
Passing sentence, Judge Nicholas Barker said Griffiths, of Lancaster Road, Morecambe, was “entirely confused and disorientated”, and told him: “The risks that were occasioned during this course of driving to other road users were extreme and, consequentially, could have been fatal for not only you but many people.”
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