A drink driver drove into a Nissan Juke with such force her car ended up partially on the other vehicle, York Magistrates' Court heard.

York fitness instructor Ashton Shand was still three times the legal alcohol limit two and a half hours after the collision in a residential street in the city, said Alison Whiteley, prosecuting.

She was driving her Renault Clio on the wrong side of the road as the Nissan Juke came round a bend, the court heard.

Shand, 37, who leads groups at a York gym, of Hebden Walk, Whinmoor, Leeds, pleaded guilty to drink driving. She had previously been convicted of drink driving in 2009.

District judge Adrian Lower told her: “You were driving when you shouldn’t have been driving. You must have known you shouldn’t have been driving.”

He said she had a problem that had been going for far too long and that she needed help.

He made her subject to a community order with six months’ alcohol rehabilitation treatment, 20 days’ rehabilitative activities and 120 hours’ unpaid work.

He also banned her from driving for two years and ordered her to pay a £114 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs.

Shand told a probation officer that she started drinking when she was 14 and the day before the crash, she had had to put down her beloved German Shepherd because he was terminally ill.

She had been very emotional and went  out and bought some alcohol.

Ms Whiteley said the Nissan Juke was being driven along Horseshoe off Tadcaster Road at 5.45pm on October 7 when Shand came into sight on the wrong side of the road.

“She hit the Nissan with such force her car mounted the other car and caused damage,” she said. “The Nissan was knocked backwards about a metre.”

Shand was still in her car when the police arrived an hour later and arrested her.

A breath test at Fulford Road Police Station at 8.15pm gave a reading of 105 micrograms in 100 millilitres of breath, said Ms Whiteley. The legal limit is 35 micrograms.

For her, Keith Whitehouse said she had a kind of “addiction” to binge drinking.

“She has long periods of abstinence but when she drinks it is to excess, truly to excess,” he said.

Shand now accepted she had a difficulty she needed help with and had  sought alcohol rehabilitation help in York.

Shand travelled two days a week to Dewsbury to care for a woman with cerebral palsy which she would not be able to do when she was banned as well as doing her York gym job.

“She very much regrets what she has done,” the defence solicitor said about the drink driving. “She feels she has let down herself but also this lady she has cared for for a number of years.”