A man drove the wrong way down the M4 motorway before stopping in the middle lane, a court has heard. Jeffrey Stevens then tried to leave the motorway by driving up an on-slip but was boxed in and stopped by police units.
A judge at Swansea Crown Court told the 53-year-old defendant that without any kind of medical explanation for his behaviour it seemed the influence of substances had “deprived you of all judgement”. He said the fact that nobody was injured in the incident was due to the efforts of the police in alerting other motorway users, the time of day it happened, and sheer good fortune.
Regan Walters, prosecuting, told the court that at 3.45am on January 28 last year a police vehicle was travelling eastwards on the M4 motorway near junction 37 for Pyle when it came up behind a black Fiesta car driving slowly in the centre lane of the carriageway. He said as the officers followed the Ford it suddenly veered to the left and performed a U-turn in the hard shoulder before driving off the way it had come travelling against the flow of traffic. The incident was reported to police headquarters and police units in the Port Talbot and Bridgend areas were tasked with responding.
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The court heard a police unit joined the westbound carriageway of the motorway and caught up with Stevens and shadowed his progress from the other side of the central reservation while another unit travelling eastbound found the defendant approaching and passing “at speed”. The court heard Stevens continued to head westwards towards Port Talbot in the wrong carriageway before slowing down to around 20mph and then stopping in the middle lane. Stevens then began to exit the motorway using the on-slip at Margam but was boxed in by marked and unmarked police cars.
The prosecutor said Stevens “appeared drowsy with pinpoint pupils and was unsteady on his feet” and told officers he had been to Cardiff to drop off a friend and had mistakenly thought there had been a crash on the road. The prosecutor said a roadside alcohol breath test was negative but a drug swipe prove positive for cannabis, though Stevens told officers he had never smoked cannabis in his life. The defendant was taken to a police station where he repeatedly refused to provide a sample of urine for analysis before falling asleep in his cell. For the latest court reports, sign up to our crime newsletter here.
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Jeffrey Stevens, of Wyndham Street, Port Talbot, had previously pleaded guilty to dangerous driving and failing to provide a specimen for analysis when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has 10 previous convictions for 15 offences including being in charge of a vehicle with excess alcohol, dangerous driving, failing to stop after an accident, and being concerned in the supply of Class A drugs from 2017 for which he was sentenced to 27 months in prison.
Jon Tarrant, for Stevens, said the defendant still maintained the position that he has no idea how the cannabis detected in the roadside test came to be in his system. He said the “odd” behaviour exhibited on the night in question “must have been influenced by what was going on in his life” including a chance meeting with someone in the early part of 2024 which awakened “a deep and dark history”.
Judge Geraint Walters said the facts of the case were concerning and told the defendant that without any kind of medical explanation it seemed the influence of substances had “deprived you of all judgement”. With one-third discounts for his guilty pleas Stevens was sentenced to 12 months in prison comprising 12 months for dangerous driving and four months for failing to provide a sample to run concurrently. He will serve up to half the 12 months in prison before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community. Stevens was disqualified from driving for four years and the ban was extended by an additional six months to account for the period he will be behind bars.
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