A WOMAN with severe emphysema has been banned from driving for three years after crashing her mobility scooter into a garden wall.

Margaret Seymour, from Spennymoor, County Durham, admitted being drunk while in control of a mechanicallypropelled vehicle after a breath test revealed she was almost twice the legal drinkdrive limit.

Police were called to the town’s Bryan Street at about 7.40pm on August 18 to find the 58-year-old still on her scooter.

Alison Nunn, prosecuting yesterday at Newton Aycliffe Magistrates’ Court, in County Durham, said the scooter was straddling the path and road, having hit a garden wall.

She said the officers could smell alcohol on Seymour and carried out a blood test – she was unable to blow into a breathalyser because of her ill health.

She was found to have 217 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood. The legal limit is 80.

Clive Booth, mitigating, said that the incident had been caused by “exceptional circumstances”.

He said that Seymour, of King Street, had been diagnosed with emphysema in February and it was this which had triggered her drinking.

She was banned from driving a vehicle on the roads for three years and was fined £150 and ordered to pay £100 costs.

However, she will be free to carry on using her scooter because a driving licence is not needed for it.

Speaking afterwards, Spennymoor police neighbourhood inspector Bill Bentham warned that people using mobility scooters must abide by the same rules of the road as other vehicles.

“People may think a mobility scooter travels reasonably slowly, but if they hit somebody they can cause serious injury,”

he said. “Whatever you are taking onto the road, the advice is the same, if you’ve had a drink don’t drive.”

Mobility scooters are currently exempt from some motoring offences under the Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, which has seen inconsistency in the way drunk users are dealt with.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has called for the law to be clarified.

A spokesman said: “Some laws should apply to mobility scooter users and it is important that consistency is applied when charging and sentencing people with mobility scooter offences – at the moment, actions vary widely.”