HGV drivers stop drink driver on Selby area narrow road

Sarah Tyrer, prosecuting, said a roadside breath test showed that Paul Wright, 62, was more than twice the drink drive limit the following morning.

He was driving a Polo too fast along a narrow country lane and when he saw a lorry coming towards him blocking the way, he tried to squeeze past him on the verge rather than use a passing place just behind him.

The driver of a second lorry travelling immediately behind the first decided after getting out and going up to Wright that he was “hammered” and both lorry drivers agreed he had been drinking because of the way he was slurring his words and other behaviour, said Ms Tyrer.

They took his car keys off him and kept him at the scene until police arrived.

Officers found three empty alcohol containers in the car, and after he failed the roadside breath test, arrested him and took him to Fulford Road Police Station when he refused to take a breath test that could be used as evidence against him in court, said Ms Tyrer.

Wright, of King Rudding Lane, Riccall, pleaded guilty to failure to provide a breath test at the police station.

For him, Lee-Anne Robins-Hicks said Wright had been watching a World Cup quarter-final the previous evening with friends in a local pub.

He had thought he was fit to drive the following morning when his daughter rang him asking him to pick her and two bags up from a bus stop some distance down the road.

He had medical problems which meant he had felt physically “very uncomfortable” when he was asked to take the breath test in the police station but he hadn’t explained this properly to the police.

Magistrates banned Wright from driving for 12 months, fined him £120 and ordered him to pay a £48 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs.

Ms Tyrer said the two lorry drivers were working for a waste management company as they drove along King Rudding Lane, a single track road with passing places, at 9.10am on July 3.

The roadside breath test gave a reading of 84 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35.

Ms Robins-Hicks said Wright thought the first lorry had been driving too fast and that he had gone onto the verge in response.  He had then been blocked in.