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A lorry driver who put countless road users at risk due to his intoxicated state has been imprisoned. Gheorghe Hirtopeanu, who is 65 years old and of no fixed abode, was filmed swerving across the A1M between Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire in a 44-tonne Scania lorry on June 27th last year. The police were alerted and attempted to pull him over, but he refused to stop, forcing them to use a stinger device to reduce his speed before they could detain him.
Hirtopeanu appeared intoxicated when they finally apprehended him, but he refused both a breath test and a specimen analysis. He later pled guilty to a range of charges, including dangerous driving, driving whilst unfit, failure to stop, and driving a vehicle towing a trailer on the offside lane of a motorway. He was sentenced to 14 months in jail and was banned from driving for almost eight and a half years.
His Honour Judge Grey, who presided over the case at Cambridge Crown Court, described Hirtopeanu’s actions and abilities behind the wheel as “outrageous”. He warned that only a combination of luck and police skill had prevented Hirtopeanu from seriously injuring or killing others. He branded the lorry driver “an appalling risk to literally thousands of other road users” and called for a stiff sentence as a deterrent for others who might be tempted to behave in a similar way.
The PC Jemma Russell of the relevant road traffic unit expressed gratitude to the members of the public who had noticed Hirtopeanu’s erratic driving and had called the police. The case is one of many in which such drivers have been successfully apprehended and prosecuted, often due to the intervention of concerned members of the public who have spotted their behaviour
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