There is a decidedly vehicular flavour to Thursday’s court round-up.
Burned by drug use
A woman high on speed parked her car on a junction, believing her boot was on fire.
A concerned motorist found Karen Willox in her car halfway between the A914 and the car park of Muddy Boots, Balmalcolm, Fife.
The 46-year-old, of Roselea Terrace, Ladybank, was banned from driving for 12 months and fined £333 after pleading guilty to being unfit while in charge of a car on October 29.
Solicitor Larry Flynn told Dundee Sheriff Court: “She uses speed on a recreational basis and should not have been behind the wheel of a car.”
Tracking device charge
A woman has allegedly followed a man to his home after placing a tracking device on his car, before sharing a video of him performing a sex act.
Bea Burgyan, 26, of Mill Street, Kirkcaldy, is charged with causing the man to suffer fear or alarm between August 1 and February 27.
Prosecutors allege she attended the man’s workplace at a delivery firm in Glenrothes and placed a tracking device on his vehicle.
She allegedly attended his home in Dundee, sent photos of the address to him and threatened to disclose the details of an affair.
Se is accused of sending the video to a woman in Dundee on February 17. allegedly
Burgyan appeared at Dundee Sheriff Court to plead not guilty and a trial was fixed for June.
Close call during Close Pass
An pensioner driver was fined £200 for a near miss with a police cyclist.
Keith Nicholson, 73, admitted getting too close to PC Alistair Mearns while motoring along the A85 Perth to Crieff road, near Huntingtower.
Fiscal depute Sean Maher told the Justice of the Peace Court in Perth the offence was detected as part of the force’s Close Pass initiative to promote cyclist awareness, launched that day.
PC Mearns was in plain clothes as he pedalled along the stretch just before midday on August 3, recording with video cameras on the front and rear of his cycle.
“He was overtaken by a vehicle which was travelling towards Perth,” Mr Maher said.
“The vehicle came close to him and he was nearly struck.”
A nearby police motorcyclist traced Nicholson’s car and pulled him over.
After viewing video, he admitted he had come too close to the police officer.
It also emerged Nicholson was driving with an expired licence, having forgotten to renew it.
Pleading guilty by letter, Nicholson, of West Huntingtower, Perth, admitted driving without due care and attention and without a current licence.
Sheriff Alison Michie ordered him to pay a fine of £200.
The near miss happened on the first day of the Close Pass initiative in Perth and Kinross.
The scheme was launched after a rise in cycling sparked by lockdown.
In a statement issued by Tayside police just an hour before the A85 incident, Inspector Greg Burns said: “This preventative approach allows for positive engagement and an opportunity to educate and increase driver awareness about the need to give cyclists plenty of space.”
The campaign was later launched in Dundee.
Covert claim
Pensioner Edward Anderson, 72, has denied secretly taking videos and photographs of children outside a primary school.
He allegedly behaved in a threatening or abusive manner likely to cause fear or alarm outside Blackness Primary School, Dundee, on March 3.
It is alleged Anderson, of Perth Road, was outside the school and covertly held a mobile phone in a manner that implied he was taking a video recording or photographs of children at the school.
He pled not guilty and a trial was fixed for December.
