Driving ban for 80mph speeder on the Avenue

Saturday 13 May 2017

A driver who was clocked doing about 80 miles an hour on Victoria Avenue has been convicted of dangerous driving, given 120 hours community service and banned from driving for 18 months.

Neil Holmes (39), who was driving west along the Avenue in October, was followed by a police car from outside the Grand Hotel to the burger bar where they pulled him over.

The Magistrate's Court was shown two video clips. One, from a surveillance camera, showed the two cars at West Park. The other, recorded on a police officer’s body camera, showed the view from inside the chasing police car. On it, the officer is heard giving a running commentary in which she says their car speedometer shows the car in front is going at about 80 miles an hour.

In court, Holmes denied speeding or that his driving was dangerous.

But in sentencing, Magistrate Bridget Shaw said Holmes’s driving fell well short of what is expected of a ‘competent and careful driver’. She said he could easily have knocked someone over, and his speed, the fact that it was dark, and it had been raining heavily, would seriously have affected braking distances, and made it even more likely an accident could have happened.

Magistrate Shaw also noted he’d had to swerve to avoid road works on the Avenue. Whilst saying it was not the worst case of dangerous driving she had ever heard, it could still have had serious consequences.