A PENSIONER who was left with serious injuries after she was knocked down by a car being driven on the wrong side of the road, hit out at the law last night after the driver walked free from court.

Grandmother Doris Madden, 72, suffered a broken vertebrae and was in hospital for nine days after John Beresford ploughed into her as she returned from a shopping trip on Teesside.

Beresford had driven around a traffic island on the wrong side of the road to get past another car on Mitchell Avenue, Thornaby, near Stockton, before the accident happened in July last year.

At the time, he was facing another charge of dangerous driving after leading police on a chase through Thornaby the previous December when he was spotted in a Mitsubishi Shogun without learner plates.

Martina Connolly, prosecuting at Teesside Crown Court, said that when Beresford was caught and cautioned, he told officers: "I am sick of you f***ers stopping me. You are bang out of order and won't catch me next time."

Seven months later, he bought a Vauxhall Astra for £950 and took to the roads again, knocking down Mrs Madden during what his barrister Stephen Constantine described as a momentary lapse.

Mr Recorder Tim Stead told Beresford, who denied dangerous driving but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of careless driving, that the law stated he could not be jailed for the offence.

He also said he would not impose a severe financial penalty because he had no means to pay and it would hit his girlfriend and their young baby.

Instead, Beresford, 23, of Victoria Road, Thornaby, was given a 12-month conditional discharge, banned from driving for two years and ordered to pay £178 costs at a rate of £5 a week.

Mrs Madden, from Thornaby, said: "I am disgusted with the outcome, but the judge seemed to have no alternative.

"It is the law that needs changing because the system is all in favour of the criminal and against the victim.

"I am lucky to be alive, but the next person might not be. He will drive again and the next time he hits somebody, he could kill them."

Mrs Madden also had 13 stitches in a head wound and spent 17 weeks in a surgical collar following the accident. She still suffers dizziness and problems with her knee.

Mr Recorder Stead told the court: "I would very much like to punish him, and, if he was working and earning a good wage there would be a heavy financial penalty, commensurate with the maximum, but it doesn't appear to me that that is a practical possibility.

"Any fine would have to be so modest that it would be an insult to the poor lady who was injured."