A drink-driving courier was five times the alcohol limit when he swerved into oncoming traffic forcing another car to take evasive action.
Delivery driver Andrej Bartko was then spotted “staggering” from his van outside his house.
When officers arrived to arrest him he was so unsteady on his feet that they had to help him into the police vehicle.
Bartko, 46, appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court to admit charges of drink-driving and dangerous driving relating to the incident on November 11 of last year.
Fiscal depute Emma MacEwan said that at around 8.45pm on that day witnesses had been travelling along Dingwall’s Tulloch Avenue when they encountered Bartko’s van on the wrong side of the road.
Head-on collision avoided
The other vehicle had to take evasive action to avoid a head-on collision, Ms MacEwan told the court.
Following this close call, the other driver turned their vehicle around and followed Bartko and police were called.
The driver tailed Bartko to his home address in Fraser Road where he was seen staggering from the van.
Officers attended and observed that he smelled of alcohol, had glazed eyes and was unsteady on his feet.
Such was his difficulty in walking that he needed to be helped to the police vehicle.
Asked through a telephone interpreter to confirm who had been driving the vehicle, he said: “I was driving it.”
Dangerous driver was five times the limit
After failing a roadside breath test he was taken to Burnett Road Police Station, where further testing revealed his breath alcohol level to be 123 microgrammes per 100 millilitres – more than five times the legal limit of 22 microgrammes.
Bartko’s solicitor Matthew Berlow said that the inevitable loss of his driving licence was going to put delivery driver Bartko and his family in “dire financial straits”.
He acknowledged the “very high reading” and said he suspected that it may be symptomatic of “some deeper rooted problem that Mr Bartko requires to address”.
The married father-of-three “deeply regrets his actions”.
Mr Berlow added: “He had been drinking earlier in the day and foolishly decided to take his van to do an errand at a local shop.”
Sheriff Eilidh MacDonald deferred sentencing to next month for the production of reports and disqualified Bartko from driving in the interim.