Driver Scott Revell dumps lorry and runs across four lanes of M1 traffic
A banned driver who dumped his lorry in the outside lane of the M1 and ran across four lanes of traffic to escape police has been jailed.
Scott Revell ditched his HGV and vaulted over the central reservation on the motorway in Derbyshire, Derby Crown Court heard. In the early hours of May 29, police near junction 29 spotted a bulge in a curtain-sided trailer Revell was towing, reports DerbyshireLive[1].
A police car followed Revell’s lorry, which had false number plates, and attempted to pull the lorry over. But Revell continued so a second police car joined the pursuit. The court saw CCTV of the wagon swerving from side-to-side before it stopped in the outside lane.
Prosecuting, Richardo Childs said: “He left the vehicle, jumped over the central reservation onto the southbound carriageway and ran across the lanes into a verge.
“He was arrested and interviewed and along with no comment answers said he was the passenger and that someone else was driving who he did not know. He said he had been in London at the time and was hitchhiking back home.”
The court heard Revell, who admitted dangerous driving, driving while disqualified, driving on false plates and driving without insurance, had 22 convictions for 56 offences. Revell, 45, from Victoria Street, Allerton Bywater, near Castleford, had been caught driving while banned several times before, the court heard.
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He also admitted the offence put him in breach of a suspended sentence order, imposed in April of this year, just a month before the Derbyshire offences, for driving while disqualified and again on false plates.
Ian Brook, mitigating, said his client has been in custody since he was arrested in late May and that the suspended sentence order was a previous district judge “giving him a chance”.
He said: “He knows he has let the system and the court down by this reoffending and he clearly has a bad driving record which speaks for itself.
“This is not the worst piece of dangerous driving any of us have ever seen, it was early in the morning and the M1 was relatively quiet. This is not one of those cases where there’s a high-speed pursuit with someone running red lights and going the wrong way round a roundabout.”
Jailing Revell for 18 months, Judge Jonathan Bennett said: “In my view, this dangerous driving is a serious matter because firstly there was a police chase and secondly, having looked at the footage and heard what happened, this was a highly dangerous manoeuvre.
“There was something protruding from the van you were driving, you were swaying from side-to-side and you then abandoned the vehicle not in the first lane, not on the hard shoulder, but in the outside lane and you then scarpered across the motorway which was an incredibly dangerous manoeuvre. Fortunately, it was something like 4.40am in the morning, the traffic was light and vehicles managed to avoid you, but for the grace of God.
“You have a horrendous [criminal] record with 56 offences and if I had to count them all it would take me a long time and a number of them are for driving while disqualified. You need to break the cycle you are in.”
Judge Bennett disqualified Revell from driving for 141 weeks.
References
- ^ DerbyshireLive (www.derbytelegraph.co.uk)
- ^ Fears boss at Lucy Letby hospital handed ‘get out of jail free card’ (www.examinerlive.co.uk)
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