A motorist has been handed a two-year ban after his car was left in lane three of the M6 when he crashed it whilst unfit through drugs.
Police were called to the collision scene, on the northbound carriageway near Tebay at 9pm on March 30.
They learned that the car — a Volkswagen Golf driven by Joseph Grieve, 25 — had come to rest in lane three and was difficult for other road users to see.
Carlisle magistrates heard two patrol officers located the vehicle, found damage to the central reservation and that the car was stationary in lane three, facing in the wrong direction.
There was debris in the road originating both from the central reservation area and the Golf.
The driver identified himself as Grieve, who was “very unsteady on his feet”. He recalled having been travelling at 80mph in lane three but didn’t know what had then happened.
He appeared extremely drowsy and confused with slurred speech, the court heard.
Samples of breath and saliva showed nothing untoward but police remained concerned as Grieve was struggling to stay awake, concentrate or focus on questions put to him.
An officer concluded he was impaired after putting him through a series of walking and balancing tests at a station. A blood sample was taken, analysed and showed the presence of substances which, an expert concluded, had “the potential to impair driving”.
Grieve, of Lawson Street, Carlisle, admitted driving whilst unfit through drugs.
The court heard he had since been sentenced for a separate drug-driving crime which occurred less than a month before the motorway offence.
Grieve, the carer for his disabled girlfriend, told a probation officer he had “started taking diazepam as a way of coping with the stress of it all” as the couple came to terms with a shock diagnosis she had received. But the probation officer said to magistrates: “He tells me since then, March 30, he hasn’t used diazepam at all. He has never, ever used any illegal substances.”
Grieve received a 12-month community order comprising 80 hours’ unpaid work, and a two-year driving ban.
