A 19-YEAR-OLD who crashed his car into a granite wall while more than two and a half times the legal alcohol limit has been told he could have been jailed for the crime.
Trennon Bettany was instead ordered to carry out 150 hours of community service and banned from driving for three and a half years, after what Magistrate Bridget Shaw called ‘a horrendous crash’ that was ‘serious enough for custody’.
The Magistrate’s Court heard that Bettany drank four pints of cider at the Trafalgar Inn in St Aubin on 19 March, before leaving at around 9.20pm and driving into town, where he drank three double vodkas at a nightclub.
While driving home with a passenger along Rue de Haut after 1.20am, he lost control of his white Renault Clio and crashed into a wall.
‘The wall was pretty much demolished and the car was very substantially damaged,’ St Brelade Centenier Amanda Wright, prosecuting, said.
Bettany and his passenger, who were both injured, left the scene.
Mrs Wright said: ‘At 4.26am a member of the public saw the vehicle, with both air bags inflated.’
At 8.16am, Bettany returned to the scene and admitted to the police that he had been driving.
A roadside breath test showed he still had 90 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal maximum is 35 micrograms.
He pleaded guilty to charges of drink-driving and failing to report an accident.
Advocate James Bell, defending, said Bettany wanted to apologise ‘to the court and all concerned’.
He said: ‘He regrets his terrible decision to drive. After he hit the wall, there was genuine panic on his part.’
Bettany has not driven since the accident so Advocate Bell pointed out: ‘In a way he has had a self-imposed disqualification already.’
He added: ‘He has learnt his lesson and it will never happen again.’
Mrs Shaw said: ‘This could have ended in a very different way. Everyone who drives any vehicle on any road has to understand that it has the potential to do serious damage or to kill.’
She added: ‘This was gross intoxication. And you must have been driving at speed to demolish a wall.’
She said she was taking into consideration his early guilty plea, his lack of previous convictions and his age by imposing a community service order and lengthy driving ban instead of prison.
But she warned him: ‘You will not get a second chance.’
Bettany will have to retake the Jersey driving test after the ban has elapsed if he wants to drive again.
