BLIND MAN WITH NO LICENCE DRUNK-DROVE 150 MILES BY FOLLOWING TAILLIGHTS

Anthony Hall, 50, of Huddersfield, has been registered blind for two years and has never held a driving licence. On 29 June he took his partner's Vauxhall Meriva without asking, after the two of them shared four bottles of wine, and pointed it north. Police stopped him on the M6 near Carlisle at 1.45am, roughly 150 miles later. Asked how he had got that far, he told officers he followed the tail lights of lorries. Every mile of that trip required somebody else to not notice. He stopped for fuel somewhere along the route and a petrol station attendant filled the car up for him. Police got a tip that there was a driver on the M6 who was drunk and also blind, which is a hell of a thing to hear over the radio at one in the morning. He blew 50 micrograms at the roadside and 46 at the station against a limit of 35, and the wine is maybe the fourth most alarming detail here. The court heard he had suffered a breakdown, was running from money and family problems, and wanted to reach Scotland. Nobody was hurt, which the court called miraculous. Kirklees magistrates handed him 36 weeks suspended for 18 months and banned him from driving for a year. A driving ban. For a man with no sight and no licence, who is therefore back in the clear next autumn.

Why you should give a shit: He got two hours and 150 miles up a national motorway before one single person stopped him, and the official fix is a one year ban on a man who was never allowed to drive in the first place.