After his company car contacted 999 when he crashed while drunk, a gas engineer has been banned from driving.
Alan McShane was driving home after watching a football match when he collided with a kerb.
According to a court hearing, the incident activated the airbags in his electric Mercedes EQC 4×4, which immediately informed emergency services.
Michael Henderson, defending, said his client remembered hearing ‘a voice, part of the safety system, saying “We’ve called emergency services, are you all right?” He didn’t know what was going on. Paramedics turned up, they must have been called by the system.’
McShane, 37, was found to have a blood alcohol level of 110 microgrammes per 100ml of breath, which was more than three times the legal limit of 35 microgrammes.
In the early hours of May 17, he admitted to drinking and driving.
McShane, a senior manager at a heating company, was out with pals after work to see Newcastle United beat Arsenal when the tragedy occurred, according to prosecutor Sarah Malkinson.
He had clipped the kerb and collided with street furniture as he exited the Central Motorway on his way home to Wallsend, near Newcastle.
Mr Henderson said McShane had no previous convictions and was ‘basically a hard-working man who, on the night in question, made a significant mistake’.
At Newcastle Magistrates’ Court, McShane was fined £1,500, with £230 in costs, and was banned from driving for 25 months, with the opportunity of reducing the penalty by 25 weeks by completing a drink-drive rehabilitation course.
Since September 2014, all new Mercedes have had an emergency call system that immediately alerts rescue services in the case of a serious collision.
The function can reveal the vehicle’s GPS location as well as other vital information such as the number of passengers and the vehicle’s journey direction.