A driver wept in court as he was jailed for drug-driving and crashing head-on with another car. Jason Chambers was behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Tiguan after drinking and taking cocaine and cannabis.
Chambers crossed Saxondale roundabout onto Grantham Road, Bingham, and attempted to overtake a lorry in lane one. But he lost control, his car crossing the central reservation and ploughing into the other car, injuring both occupants at around 10pm on March 3, 2021.
The passenger, who had a fractured sternum, bleed on her brain and ligament damage, was unaware of the smash as she was looking at her phone. She was surrounded by airbags and the smell of smoke and had to crawl out of her husband's car which he had been driving.
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Her statement, read as Chambers was jailed for 16 months for causing serious injury by dangerous driving, revealed she still felt weak six months after the collision and had difficulty breathing. She lost her independence and is wary of other road users when she is out in her car.
Her husband, who had a broken wrist and pain in his neck and shoulders, heard Chambers, say "it is all my fault". The lorry driver, who Chambers overtook moments before, saw Chamber's car, "travelling too fast and the angle (of the car) was too big", Nottingham Crown Court heard on Monday, May 30.
The lorry driver, whose dash camera recorded the horrific collision, which was played in court, heard 36-year-old Chambers say at the scene, "Sorry, sorry, I'm a stupid idiot".
Chambers failed a road side breath test, and further tests at a police station showed he was over the drink drive limit, the court heard.
But he was not charged with drink-driving within the six-month time limit due to an error - which Judge Gregory Dickinson QC raised as a concern. Gurdial Singh, prosecuting, said: "He was clearly under the influence of drink and drugs".
Mitigating, Edward Hetherington said Chambers, who cried in the dock, is a hard-working father and family man. "Since that day he has engaged with therapy".
Judge Dickinson told Chambers, a father-of-three: "It was obvious at the time that a serious accident was highly likely if not inevitable. You were driving too fast to control your car as you approached that roundabout and ploughed straight into the other car with a woman in the passenger seat.
"There was a massive impact. You should be grateful that everybody actually emerged alive from this, yourself included". Chambers, of Queen Street, Bottesford, had been caught speeding just four weeks before the accident.
He pleaded guilty to causing serious injury by dangerous driving - receiving the 16-month term - and a driving ban for two years and eight months. For the drug-driving offences, three-month concurrent sentences were imposed, and no separate penalty for possessing cannabis, all which he had admitted.
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