A woman feared she and her husband would die when she saw a car heading straight for their BMW on the wrong side of the road.

At the magistrates' court in Carlisle, John Bewick, 18, who was at the wheel of the Peugeot car that was on the wrong side of the road, pleaded guilty to careless driving.

Prosecutor Pam Ward described how the defendant was driving on the A596 near his home in Wigton on April 23 with a woman passenger.

But as he negotiated a left hand bend his car drifted on to the wrong side of the road into the path of an oncoming BMW, driven by a man called Mark Wood whose wife Margaret was in the passenger seat.

In her statement, Mrs Wood later recalled seeing the Peugeot on the wrong side of the road.

"She recalled wondering what was going on, thinking the driver had fallen asleep. She remembered thinking: 'We're dead.'" said Mrs Ward.

In the collision that followed, said Mrs Ward, Mr Wood suffered a broken wrist and hand. In his police interview, Bewick, of Howrigg Bank, Wigton, said he was not sure what had happened.

He remembered looking the woman in the passenger seat beside him, then looking up and crashing.

He said that he passed his test in October last year and needed his car for his job.

District Judge Gerald Chalk fined him £130, with £85 costs, and a £30 victim surcharge. He imposed five points on the defendant's licence.