A disqualified motorist’s dangerous driving caused him to crash his then girlfriend’s car, leaving her with a fractured arm and him a broken back.
Paul Callaghan took the wheel when the woman became tired on a road trip from Bathgate to Wick.
But as he hurried to make up time he took a wrong turn and lost control on Main Street Lybster, colliding with a parked van and sign and flipping the car onto its roof.
Callaghan, 29, appeared via videolink from custody to admit a charge of causing serious injury by dangerous driving as well as driving while disqualified at Inverness Sheriff Court.
Fiscal depute Pauline Gair told the court that the pair had set off from Bathgate at 7.30pm on May 21 last year to travel to Wick.
She said the woman was driving initially but at some point the accused began to drive.
Girlfriend asked disqualified driver to ‘slow down’
Shortly after midnight Callaghan took a wrong turn off of the A99, into Main Street, Lybster.
“He turned sharply at some speed,” Mrs Gair said, adding: “She asked him to slow down. She saw them head toward a sign and the car crashed.”
The woman managed to crawl free of the overturned car, but Callaghan was unconscious inside.
A witness, who had heard the vehicle “revving and driving at speed” and who “guessed the speed to be well above the speed limit and too fast for the road”, called 999.
The woman was treated at Caithness General Hospital for brusing to her scalp, neck, chest wall, thorax and hip, grazing to her hip and knee and a broken arm.
She broke off her relationship with Callaghan following the incident.
Callaghan was airlifted to Raigmore Hospital where he was found to have fractured vertebrae in his back.
Solicitor Fraser McKinnon, for Callaghan, said his client had “stupidly” agreed to drive after the woman tired having set out for the journey following a week at work.
He said: “Both parties didn’t know the area. They got lost and the hour was getting late.
“Mr Callaghan tried to make up time and that was reflected in his driving. Despite his abject stupidity, he was actually incredibly fortunate neither he nor [the passenger] suffered more serious injuries.”
Second dangerous driving conviction
Mr McKinnon said Callaghan, who has a previous conviction for dangerous driving in 2016, had little recollection of the incident but that the seriousness of his injuries had come as a “real fright to him.”
Sheriff Sara Matheson sentenced Callaghan, a prisoner who has already served 351 days on remand, to 22 months in jail backdated to May 31 last year.
She also banned him from the roads for five years and told him: “You have learnt once again that a motor vehicle can be a deadly weapon.
“It is only good luck that you didn’t kill someone.”
