A MOTORIST who pretended he did not drink until after an accident that blocked a road just outside York, has lost his business and his licence the city’s magistrates heard.

James Oliver Thomas Moore-Carnell, 27, had twice the legal amount of alcohol in his body when he crashed his Transit van into a telegraph pole late on June 19, said Neil Holdsworth, prosecuting. The wreckage of the pole and the vehicle blocked Stockton Lane.

At different times, Moore-Carnell claimed he had had something to drink while he waited 30 minutes at the scene of the crash. He also claimed he waited ten minutes at the crash before drinking a can of lager which he had discarded near the entrance to a farm lane, and had drunk a second can just before police met him between the flyover over the A64.

However, North Yorkshire Police officers did not find any alcohol containers in the vehicle or near the farm lane entrance or near where they first saw him, and a farmer’s family who followed him from the scene of the crash until he met the police, did not see him drinking or discard anything.

The family also said Moore-Carnell had run off from the crash scene towards York when they told him the police had to be called and that he should stay where he was.

Moore-Carnell, of Stockton Lane, York, changed his plea to guilty to drink driving on the day he was due to stand trial.

He told magistrates: “It took me five years to get my business up and running and that one day it was all stripped from me.”

Magistrates banned him from driving for 20 months and ordered him to pay a total of £953 including a £594 fine, a £59 statutory surcharge and £300 prosecution costs.

He said: “I cannot pay. I don’t have any money, I don’t have any savings.”

Moore-Carnell said the only work he knew was building and he had been trying unsuccessfully to get work since the crash, as building companies did not allow people with criminal records to work on houses.