A lorry driver who spent hours downing pints and a bottle of vodka blamed fumes from broken bottles for his “extreme intoxication”.
Mark Wright claimed to have “breathed in a large amount of alcohol” after being stopped by police as he drove across Scotland in his 18-tonne vehicle.
He had grabbed only a couple of hours sleep after an evening drinking before climbing behind the wheel to transport a load of alcohol between Irvine in Ayrshire and Aberdeen.
Despite being well over the legal limit, he managed to complete a large part of his journey before a combination of intoxication and tiredness hit home.
Worried motorists made a flood of calls to the police and officers eventually pulled him over in Perthshire at 5.30pm.
A roadside breath test revealed he still had more than three times the legal level of alcohol in his system.
It eventually emerged that he had topped up the alcohol consumed the night before by downing a bottle of cider as he made his 180-mile journey along some of Scotland’s busiest roads.
Wright told police officers that fumes from broken bottles within his load were to blame for his state of “extreme intoxication”, claiming to have “breathed in a large amount of alcohol”.
The “glib remark” was another black mark against him yesterday at Perth Sheriff Court as he was jailed for four months.
He was also banned from the road for 44 months by Sheriff Lindsay Foulis, who said: “The consequences of the driver of an 18-tonne commercial vehicle losing control are potentially catastrophic.
“You were still more than three times the legal limit at the end of the day, having undertaken a journey that involved travelling across Scotland.
“One can only begin to suppose what level of alcohol was in your system when you began to drive that day.”
Wright, 44, of Overton Place in Irvine, admitted driving with excess alcohol (107 mic) on the A912 Bridge of Earn to Perth road last December.
It was his second conviction for drink driving, having previously been banned for 18 months in 2003.