A MAGISTRATE has called for all drink drivers to be automatically jailed.

Stipendiary magistrate Jonathon Finestein said the sooner it happened the sooner drinking and driving would stop and innocent road users would be protected.

Mr Finestein was passing sentence at Blackburn on a case he described as "the worst of its type I have ever come across."

Motorist David Casey, 42, was arrested at midnight on Thursday after hitting a lamp post near his home on Bolton Road, Blackburn.

Julie Reddish, prosecuting, said a breath test taken three hours after the accident showed he was more than three times the legal limit at 108 microgrammes and was driving while disqualified. Casey told the magistrate this was his third drink-driving offence.

Jailing him for 18 weeks and banning him from driving for five years, the magistrate told him: "Particularly at Christmas, readings as high as this will be met with an immediate prison sentence whatever the background and the situation."

Mr Finestein went on: "The sooner drink driving is regarded as an offence that immediately incurs imprisonment the sooner it will stop and the sooner children and other people just going about their business will be protected."

He told Casey: "People who drink and drive are people who kill. You collided with a lamp post at a time when you had no control over your vehicle. The miracle is that you did not hit another vehicle."

Casey admitted drink driving, driving while banned and without insurance and test certificate. Tony Wood, defending, said Casey drove after an argument with his fiancee.

Unemployed Casey said he had had very little to eat all day. He told the magistrate he did not have a drink problem.

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