A 24-year-old drink-driver dad has been warned he could have killed someone else’s child by driving home the morning after a drinking session with friends.
Damian Langer, of Law Road in Dunfermline, was breathalysed at more than twice the legal limit after crashing on the A92 road westbound, between Kirkcaldy West and Lochgelly, at around 7am on January 30.
Sheriff Timothy Niven-Smith fined Langer £666.67 and banned him from driving for a year.
The court heard Langer had travelled from Dunfermline to Kirkcaldy to see his girlfriend the day before the incident but there was a fallout.
He ended up spending time in Kirkcaldy drinking with friends until around midnight or 1am.
Langer then decided to drive back to Dunfermline the next morning because he thought he had had enough sleep.
But fiscal depute Xander van der Scheer told Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court Langer then called a friend at around 6.45am that morning to say he had fallen asleep at the wheel due to the alcohol consumed.
Police turned up a short time later, following a call from a member of the public and saw the front nearside tyre had blown out with extensive damage to the rear nearside of the car.
Officers said they smelled alcohol on Langer straight away.
Sheriff’s warning
Sheriff Niven-Smith made the point that sleep does not eradicate alcohol from the blood any quicker than if someone stayed awake all night and then drove home.
He told Langer: “I don’t need to spell out to an adult of normal intelligence how this could have ended far more seriously than it did.
“It would appear from what I have been told by the Crown and what you told your friend that you were deprived of sleep and had taken drink and crashed your car.
“It’s not difficult to see how you could have killed somebody.
“As a parent, you must be able to see how you would feel if, in that condition, you killed a mother and child en route to school or nursery in Dunfermline.”
When breathalysed at Kirkcaldy Police Station following the incident, Langer recorded a breath in alcohol reading of 55mics/100. The legal limit is 22.
