Horrifying moment drunk woman causes 'terrifying' car crash after driving wrong way on M5
7 June 2023, 12:29
Shocking footage shows collision caused by drunk woman driving wrong way on M5
This is the shocking moment a drunk woman caused a 'terrifying' car crash after driving on the M5 motorway in the wrong direction.
The horrifying crash happened just after midnight on October 5 last year, shortly after police received a number of calls reporting a Mini Cooper driving on the wrong side of the M5 motorway at Tewkesbury.
Officers rushed to the scene where the Mini and a Vauxhall Astra had crashed, with two lorries also struck and damaged in the incident.
The driver of the Astra, 30-year-old Carly Pope, a personal trainer from Bristol, suffered a broken arm in two places, whiplash, cuts, bruises and soft tissue damage while a male passenger suffered whiplash and bruising.
The drunk driver in the Mini, 65-year-old Dorothy Denny, from Bredon, sustained broken ribs. A roadside screening breath test showed she was three times over the legal alcohol limit.
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Denny, who said sad news had caused her to drink alcohol for the first time in a while, admitted consuming alcohol before driving to a BP garage to buy milk and more alcohol.
After leaving the forecourt she said she turned left instead of right for her home address, then went around the roundabout in order to get back off at Ashchurch Road.
But instead of getting off at that exit she accidentally took the prior left-hand turn, the M5 southbound off-slip, and then travelled up the motorway on the southbound side.
Believing herself to be in lane one but actually in lane three, she carried on driving against the flow of traffic for over two miles before colliding head on with the Astra and striking both HGVs.
Carly Pope said: “My arm was so badly snapped that I had to be given local anaesthetic in order for two grown men to pull and realign the bones before putting me in a plaster cast.
“The rest of my superficial injuries healed in good time but my arm was excruciating for weeks while it was in the cast and it is still extremely painful.
"I was told that one of the bones healed longer than before the accident and one healed shorter, which means I will be permanently visibly disfigured and may never regain full range of motion (at least not without pain) ever again.
She added that she is "so detached" from her job that she has been signed off three times by her doctor.
Denny was given a 20-month suspended prison sentence, £10,000 fine and banned from driving for ten years.
