A BUSINESSMAN who drove for miles along the A64 at five times the drink drive limit has been jailed.

York Magistrates’ Court heard two members of the public alerted the police about Andrew Worthington’s, pictured, bad driving on the Saturday of the late May Bank Holiday weekend.

Julian Tanikal, prosecuting, said the first saw the 52-year-old near Whitwell-on-the-Hill at 6.20pm and the second saw him 11 miles away near Rillington at 7.13pm.

When police stopped him, he was so drunk he needed help to get out of the car.

For him Pippa Carruthers said he had never been in trouble with the police before and ran a business running corporate courses and workshops.

Doctors had told him he may only have a year to live because he had cirrhosis of the liver caused by long-term alcoholism.

Jailing him for 16 weeks and banning him from driving for five years, district judge Adrian Lower said the breath test reading was “exceptionally high”.

“The A64 is a busy road, a dangerous road where accidents happen all too often,” he said.

“Drinking and driving kills people. It kills people every day of the week.

“The law-abiding public expect, quite rightly, the courts to send a strong message to people who drink and drive, particularly at the level you drunk and drove, that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated.”

Worthington, of Kentmere Approach, Leeds, pleaded guilty to drink driving.

Mr Tanikal said Worthington was weaving within his lane when police located him with the help of the second member of the public, who followed him and guided officers by phone.

He gave a breath test reading of 174 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35.

Mrs Carruthers said Worthington had stayed off alcohol for some years after his cirrhosis diagnosis.

But he had been invited to a 50th birthday reunion and had started drinking.

He had continued drinking the next day. Then his transport arrangement for the reunion had fallen down, so he had decided to drive.