By Craig Borland

A YOUNG Glasgow motorist has been spared prison despite committing one of the worst dangerous driving offences a sheriff said he could remember.

Fergal Kane repeatedly broke the speed limit, failed to stop for police, swerved between lanes, forced oncoming drivers to take evasive action, turned off his lights in darkness, failed to stop at two red traffic lights and exited a junction without ensuring it was safe.

All his actions were committed when there was heavy rain and surface water spray on the roads.

The 22-year-old, who committed the offences in Dumbarton Road, Shaftesbury Street and other roads in Dalmuir on the evening of Christmas Day 2017, broke down in tears as the sheriff told Kane how close he had come to going to prison.

His solicitor, Kenny Clark, told Dumbarton Sheriff Court there was nothing he could say to mitigate the manner of Kane’s driving – but said that until the incident his client had driven “without a blemish”.

Sheriff Maxwell Hendry said: “I hope his mother is ready for bad news. The libel is as bad a section 2 [dangerous driving charge] as I can remember seeing for a long time.”

Kane, of Cressland Drive in the Castlemilk area of Glasgow, also admitted a separate charge of acting aggressively towards his partner at a flat in Thistleneuk in Old Kilpatrick on January 1 this year.

He additionally pleaded guilty to two breaches of a curfew imposed as part of bail orders which were granted at Dumbarton Sheriff Court on December 27 and January 3. The curfew breaches both happened on March 4.

Referring to the New Year’s Day incident, prosecutor Sarah Healing said Kane’s partner had received a series of messages, phone calls and texts from him on the night of Hogmanay and the following morning, while she was seeing in 2018 with friends in Edinburgh.

The following day she returned to her Thistleneuk home and called police after finding Kane was still there and was refusing to leave the property.

Mr Clark said the curfew breaches were a “genuine misunderstanding” because his client was sure his bail address was the property in Old Kilpatrick.

“There has been a degree of naivety on his part until now,” Mr Clark said.

“I don’t think he fully appreciated the gravity of the situation until I spoke to him this morning.

“I’ve made it plain that if he does retain his liberty today, and there is the merest whiff of anything of a criminal nature, his feet won’t touch the floor.”

On the dangerous driving charge, Mr Clark said: “I say this with reservations, but no accident occurred. That may be due to good fortune rather than anything else, but no-one was injured as a result of his actions and no vehicles were damaged.”

Before passing sentence Sheriff Hendry read out the dangerous driving charge word-for-word, and told Kane: “I deliberately read out every word of the charge to bring it home to you, perhaps even more than Mr Clark has done, that this type of behaviour is wholly, wholly unacceptable.”

“It is with huge hesitation and some doubt that I do not send you to prison today.”

Kane was banned from driving for three years, placed under social work supervision until March 2020, and ordered to carry out 225 hours of unpaid community work within nine months as part of a community payback order.

Sheriff Hendry added: “If you don’t comply you will be breached, the order will be revoked, and you will come back before me again – and do not have the slightest doubt that I will remember who you are. “I will not have to think much longer that one nanosecond about what I’m going to do with you at that stage. “You have effectively come from nowhere. You are now a multiple offender – a seriously offending criminal – and I am not going to tolerate any continuation of that.”

“If you commit any further offences, no matter how trivial, you can expect to go to prison.”