A woman, who caused a traffic accident while driving without a valid licence or insurance, was distracted by her brother, who was having a fit in the car at the time, the district court has heard.<\/p>\n
Sergeant Trish O\u2019Sullivan told Bantry District Court that a motorist was driving along the R571 road at Ardgroom Outward, Co Cork, at 11.55am on August 24, 2024.<\/p>\n
As the motorist went around a bend, another vehicle was coming towards them on the wrong side of the road and despite their best efforts they could not avoid a collision.<\/p>\n
The driver of the other vehicle was Frances Lowes, aged 48, of Eskivaude, Allihies, Co Cork.<\/p>\n
Lowes admitted causing the accident and was also found to be driving without a valid NCT, insurance, or driving license.<\/p>\n
The court heard she had five previous convictions arising from another road traffic incident where she failed to remain at the scene of an accident.<\/p>\n
Defence solicitor Flor Murphy said Lowes lived in a very remote location at the tip of the Beara peninsula. He said she was the full-time carer for her brother, who had intellectual disabilities, as well as being the mother of two teenage children.<\/p>\n
The court heard that on the day in question, Lowes\u2019 brother was \u201cacting up\u201d, and that she decided to borrow her mother\u2019s car and take him for a drive to calm him down.<\/p>\n
The court heard Lowes\u2019 brother \u201ccame from the back seat\u201d during a fit, distracting her and she \u201ctotally accepts\u201d she was on the wrong side of the road.<\/p>\n
The court was told Lowes was now off the road completely and relying on friends for transport. Mr Murphy said Lowes had a \u201cvery stressful life\u201d and there were \u201chuge issues in the background\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Joanne Carroll accepted Lowes had very difficult circumstances but said she should have stopped the car when her brother began having a fit.<\/p>\n
She agreed to reduce the charge of dangerous driving to the lesser charge of careless driving and convicted and fined Lowes \u20ac125, with four months to pay.<\/p>\n
She was also placed her on a probation bond for 12 months on condition that she engages with mental health support services.<\/p>\n
For driving without a licence, she was convicted and fined \u20ac100, and was given three months to pay.<\/p>\n
The charges of no NCT, no insurance and failing to produce insurance were struck out.<\/p>\n
\n This article was funded by the Courts Reporting Scheme\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman, who caused a traffic accident while driving without a valid licence or insurance, was distracted by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,79,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-200819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork-court","tag-cork-news","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}