THE motorist at the centre of the Selby train crash has denied falling asleep at the wheel as his Land Rover slid off the M62 onto the East Coast main line.

Gary Neil Hart, 37, told police he was "buzzing with excitement" about his acquaintance with Kristeen Panter and the anticipation of meeting her the next night as he drove westward in the early hours of February 28, said prosecution counsel James Goss QC at Leeds Crown Court.

The motorist claimed he had "no problem" going 36 hours without sleep.

The prosecution allege that he spent the night before the crash talking for five hours on the phone to his girlfriend and simultaneously making a five-and-a-half hour call, which Hart claims was on the Internet.

Mr Goss alleged that Hart then drove "as fast as he could" completing the 63 miles from Louth to where he left the motorway in 70 minutes, a feat a police driver with a police escort was unable to equal.

"He must have been pushing it, pushing on the non-motorway roads before being in a position to be more relaxed when it came to the comparative monotony of the motorway," alleged Mr Goss.

The Land Rover towing a trailer carrying a Renault Savanna slid off the road at about 6.12am shortly before the roadside crash barrier started on the M62 railway bridge north of Great Heck. It went down an embankment, crashing through fences and bushes on to the East Coast main line, where almost immediately a GNER train hit it, was partially derailed and then collided head-on with a coal train. Ten people died in the crash, said Mr Goss.

"We say he must have been aware of his sleepiness and fought it for a time before succumbing, drifting off to sleep and off the road," alleged Mr Goss.

"That was dangerous driving and tragically it caused the deaths of others.

"Although the circumstances were highly unusual and the consequences exceptional in their magnitude, any motorist who falls asleep while driving endangers others who happen to be using the highway or are in close proximity to it at the time."

Hart, of Church Lane, Strubby, near Alford, Lincolnshire, denies 10 charges of causing death by dangerous driving.

Tanker driver Kevin David Darwood told the jury he passed the crash scene at about 6.15 in "blizzard, pitch black" conditions.

On the road in snow like "icing sugar on a cake", he saw two tracks crossing the hard shoulder.

"They went with a shallow angle" he alleged in evidence. "They weren't the way I would have expected them to go".

There was no vehicle at the end of them, but seconds later he saw a figure with a coat over his head, who could have been using a mobile phone, though he did not see a phone.

The prosecution allege that was Hart.

Mr Goss claimed that police investigations had ruled out any possibility that the crash was caused by vehicle failure or anything on the road.

The trial continues.

Updated: 09:23 Thursday, November 29, 2001