Mansfield McDonald's staff tipped off cops about drink driver

Thomas Jones’s orange Ford Ranger was stopped by police at the drive-through burger bar, on Park Lane, just before 3am, on February 3.

A test revealed he had 66 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath when the legal limit is 35 microgrammes.

He told police that he had drunk two pints of lager, a gin and tonic and a vodka and lemonade over the course of the evening, but “thought he would be fit to drive,” said prosecutor Robert Carr.

Laura Newton, mitigating, said that Jones, who had no previous convictions, “assures you through me that this will be the first and last time he will be before the court.”

“He had been out over a very lengthy period of time - this was clearly a miscalculation,” she added.

Jones, 24, of Scholars Way, Mansfield, admitted driving with excess alcohol when he appeared before magistrates in Mansfield, on Wednesday.

He was banned for 18 months, but was offered a drink drive rehab course which will reduce the disqualification by 137 days if completed by March 2019.

He was fined £320, and was ordered to pay £85 costs and a £32 government surcharge.