By Staff Reporter

Published at 12:05, Wednesday, 10 October 2012

A motorist who was weaving all over the road has been banned from driving.

Michael Peter Rudkin, 33, got behind the wheel when nearly three times the drink-drive limit.

He was noticed by police shortly before 2am on September when his Vauxhall Insignia was travelling very slowly along Carlisle Road, in Brampton, veering across the road.

He has been banned from driving for two-and-a-half years after he admitted drink-driving.

The police switched on their blue lights but the car kept moving, Carlisle Magistrates’ Court heard yesterday, and the sirens were activated.

They managed to get alongside Rudkin’s car and a police officer knocked on the window, asking him to stop. The court heard how he was unsteady on his feet and his speech was slurred. He failed a roadside breath test and was tested again at the police station.

Rudkin, of Old Chapel House, Hayton, Brampton, told the magistrates that he had been having a ‘difficult time lately’. He said he was being treated for depression and had lost his job. He might have to move house, he said, and was “going to struggle”.

After consideration of pre-sentence reports, Rudkin was disqualified from driving for 27 months, given a one-year community order and ordered to pay £85 court costs.

He was also ordered to attend a drink-driver’s rehabilitation course and, if passed successfully, this would reduce his ban by 27 weeks.

Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk