A MOTORIST who crashed through a roundabout between Dumbarton and Bowling while more than three times the alcohol limit has been banned from driving for four years.

John Gilchrist supplied the positive breath sample after driving his car through the Dunglass roundabout on the A82 at the start of the evening rush hour, mounting the pavement and colliding with an emergency crash barrier.

Gilchrist, who had previously admitted charges of drink-driving and dangerous driving, appeared for sentencing last week after a medical report was sought to find out whether he would be fit enough to carry out unpaid work as part of his punishment.

A previous court hearing had heard that a witness, driving another vehicle at the entrance to the roundabout at 4.40pm on October 6 last year, had seen a blue Ford Ka with Gilchrist at the wheel being driven through the roundabout and on to the footpath before coming to rest against the barrier.

That hearing, on January 5, was told police found the car mounted on the barrier with only two wheels on the road, and that Gilchrist had told officers, in slurred words, that he had drunk a can of lager at 11am that morning.

A sample of Gilchrist's breath showed a reading of 73 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath; the limit in Scotland is 22 microgrammes.

When 56-year-old Gilchrist returned to Dumbarton Sheriff Court on January 26, his solicitor, Scott Adair,confirmed that his client would be fit and willing to undertake 'light duties' in line with the medical assessment which had been ordered three weeks earlier.

Sheriff Maxwell Hendry told Gilchrist: “The bottom line here is that on October 6 you could have done anything at all.

“You could have killed yourself. You could have killed somebody else. You could have killed a child walking on the footpath. It's simply in the lap of the gods what happens next.”

Referring to Gilchrist's previous conviction for a similar offence, the sheriff said: “If you commit another of these types of offence once you have regained your licence I don't think the court can do anything other than send you to prison.”

Gilchrist was banned for three years on the drink-driving charge and one year for dangerous driving.

Placing Gilchrist, of Clyde Court in Clydebank, on social work supervision until July 2018 and ordering him to carry out a total of two hundred hours' unpaid work within nine months, Sheriff Hendry added: “If you are told to do something [by your social worker], you must do it.

“If you don't, the order will be breached, and that will also mean that at that point, there is only one option remaining.

“I want you to understand where you are now, and how close you have come to going to prison, and I want you to make sure this does not happen again.”