OAP hit accelerator instead of brake in dramatic East Lothian car smash

A pensioner who lost control of her car and smashed into a house has been banned from driving.

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Jeananne Young hit the accelerator instead of the brake causing her motor to veer across a residential street and through two gardens.

The 80-year-old eventually came to a stop when her blue Ford Fiesta crashed into the front of a house in Longniddry, East Lothian, earlier this year.

Wrong pedal: Jeananne Young

Young, a retired sub-post mistress, was said to have been left “dazed” before she was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary for a check up.

She admitted a charge of careless driving at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.

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The court heard a witness spotted Young’s Fiesta parked up at the village’s John Knox Road with the “driver’s door slightly open” at around 3pm on April 13 this year.

The car was seen “to move off from its position at speed” and colliding with a metal fence before entering the garden and drive across the driveway.

The OAP continued into a neighbouring property where she eventually came to a halt by “colliding with the wall of the house”.

Witnesses said Young, from Longniddry, seemed “dazed and did not know what happened”.

The pensioner told the passers-by that she had “hit the accelerator tor pedal in error” which had caused the vehicle to veer across the carriageway.

Police were called and Young provided a negative roadside breath test before she was taken to the ERI for assessment.

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Solicitor John Goode, defending, said had “an unblemished driving history, an unblemished character” and had never appeared in a court room before.

The lawyer added the pensioner had returned from her local post office and after stopping outside her home she decided to “make a small adjustment” to the parking of the automatic vehicle.

Mr Goode said: “She thought the car was in reverse, in fact it was in forward. She hit the accelerator and accepts this led to the car crashing into the fence and the house across the road.”

Sheriff Adrian Fraser t sentenced Young to a six month road ban and ordered her to pay a total fine of £420.

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