A dangerous driver who led police on a 90mph chase down the M40 was told he ‘could have killed several people’.
Terence Hedley, 49, was said not to have realised that the unmarked police car tailing him down the motorway with its blue lights flashing and its siren on was, in fact, a police patrol car.
A sceptical Judge Nigel Daly, who sent the Littlemore man down for a year-and-a-half on Friday, pondered aloud: “You don’t get many cars with flashing blue lights and sirens that aren’t police cars.”
Earlier, Oxford Crown Court heard that unlicensed Hedley was behind the wheel of a Ford Transit van on the M40 near junction 6 at Lewknor. Suspecting the driver of having committed a traffic offence, the two officers in their unmarked BMW illuminated the car’s blue lights to pull the van over.
Over seven minutes, he hit speeds of up to 90mph and undertook other vehicles on the M40. He came off on the slip road at the Wheatley services, then overtook on blind bends as he hurtled towards the A40.
Before joining the dual carriageway to Oxford, another set of police officers managed to throw a Stinger-type device and puncture all four of the van’s tyres.
Despite the rapidly-diminishing amount of air in the tyres, Hedley still hit 80mph before slowing down to a snail’s pace.
A blood sample taken at the time showed he was three-times the limit for cocaine bi-product benzoylecgonine.
Judge Daly told Hedley: “Having been driving dangerously on the motorway you continued to drive dangerously when you came off the motorway.
“You were overtaking vehicles, crossing double white lines. That could easily have resulted in a head-on collision, killing innocent people driving along in a perfectly normal fashion.
“It was fortune that prevented that from happening.”
He had counted eight previous offences of driving whilst disqualified on Hedley’s record. Banning him for a further three years and nine months, the judge said: “Whatever sentences have been passed upon you, you simply do not learn and this involved serious dangerous driving.
“As [your counsel] Ms Austin rightly says, not the most serious dangerous driving I’ve ever seen – but bad enough. You just don’t learn.
“You made the decision to drive like this. You could easily have killed people.”
Hedley, of Gwyneth Road, Littlemore, pleaded guilty ahead of his trial to dangerous driving, drug driving and driving without a valid licence or insurance.
In mitigation, Gordana Austin said her client had been asked to drive the van from High Wycombe in return for £50.
He had a long-term drug addiction and, when he was younger, had been involved in a tragic crash that left him with serious injuries.
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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.
To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk
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