Two uninsured motorists who drove the wrong way down dual carriageways in separate incidents are both now starting prison sentences imposed at Durham Crown Court.

Twenty-two-year-old Tom Macdonald, of Chigwell Close, Penshaw, on Wearside, received a 12-month sentence after admitting charges of dangerous driving, driving without insurance and failing to provide a specimen for analysis, pleas entered at a hearing before magistrates on January 20.

The case was sent by the magistrates to be sentenced at the crown court.

Macdonald’s sentencing hearing was told he was arrested after a police chase on foot, having abandoned a vehicle with two flat front tyres, as a result of driving over a tactically-deployed police ‘stinger’ device.

Read more: Teenager dangerous driver from Sedgefield stopped by police stinger

The court heard he was at the wheel of a Subaru Forester which came to police attention in the Easington Lane area at about 9.30pm on December 7, last year.

Having failed to stop for police it triggered a chase which saw him driving the wrong way in the direction of traffic on the A690, at Houghton-le-Spring.

Once he drove over the ‘stinger’ device, the front two tyres on the Subaru deflated and Macdonald brought the car to a halt, in Handley Crescent, East Rainton, having left the A690.

Both Macdonald and his passenger decamped the car, and tried to escape on foot, but he was arrested following a foot chase.

When arrested he was found to be in possession of capsules of the class C drug temazepam, but he refused to provide a sample for police.

Apart from the one-year prison sentence, Macdonald was banned from driving for a total of three-years-and-six months.

Read more: Drug driver led police on eight minute chase in and around Darlington

He must also sit an extended re-test if he wants to legally drive once the period of disqualification is served.

In an unconnected case at the court today (Monday February 27), Judge Jo Kidd imposed a 16-month prison sentence on 30-year-old Liam Loughlin, of Byelands Street, Middlesbrough.

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He admitted dangerous driving, driving without insurance and driving other than in accordance with the licence, all in a Saab car on Thursday Septermber 8, last year.

It stemmed from a high speed police chase which began on the A177, near Houghall College, Durham, and went onto the A181 in east Durham, where he overtook blindly, and took roundabouts in the wrong directon.

At Wellfield junction, he turned onto the A19, driving southbound on the northbound carriageway at late afternoon rush hour.

In what one of the lawyers involved described as, “the worst piece of driving” he has come across, Loughlin then came off the northbound carriageway and drove onto the southbound side of the A19 at speeds upto 110mph.

Having reversed towards a police vehicle, he abandoned the car and fled on foot.

He was arrested at about 5pm, having tried to hide in a flower bed near Northfield School, in Billingham.

Loughlin, who only held a provisional driving licence at the time, was jailed and received a total driving disqualification of 25 months.