A Rotorua woman was speeding and tailgating in a car with dangerously bald tyres before she crashed head-on into another vehicle, a court has heard.
Carol Ann Nicoll, a 54-year-old sickness beneficiary, was sentenced in the Rotorua District Court yesterday to three months' community detention with a 7pm to 7am curfew, 120 hours' community work and disqualified from driving for 12 months after previously pleading guilty to dangerous driving causing injury. She was also ordered to pay $1400 reparation.
Nicoll was driving on State Highway 3 from Rotorua to New Plymouth on September 15 when she lost control of her Toyota Camry, slid on to the wrong side of the road and collided with a car occupied by a husband and wife. The crash happened near Tongaporutu in North Taranaki.
Other motorists reported seeing her speeding, swerving, tailgating cars and trying to maintain control as she passed other cars before the crash.
Judge Chris McGuire said the husband was "badly injured", suffering eye and facial injuries and a broken collarbone. He will have impaired eyesight "indefinitely", the judge said.
Defence lawyer Gisele Schweizer said there was no dispute Nicoll's tyres were in a "shocking condition" at the time.
"She [Nicoll] accepts the vehicle should not have been on the road."
Mrs Schweizer said Nicoll had suffered a series of tragedies in her life and at the time of the crash was just trying to "keep herself together".
"She was functioning on a 'keep going' mode."
That led to Nicoll's failure to maintain the car and her decision to carry on driving when she shouldn't have, Mrs Schweizer said.
Mrs Schweizer said Nicoll had offered to pay $1400 reparation to the victim and had written him an apology letter.
"This accident has already resulted in her punishing herself," she said.
"It's the last of a long line of dramatic events in her life."
Judge McGuire said the bald tyres were one of the factors that led to the crash but Nicoll had also been driving dangerously.
He said she had shown "almost a recklessness, an abandonment of any conscious appreciation of consequences".
Although she had suffered challenges in recent years "that is no comfort at all to other innocent road users", he said.
The judge ordered Nicoll to attend any counselling, including grief counselling, that the probation service thought appropriate.