A GRANDMOTHER led traffic police on a surreal 17-mile chase – at speeds of less than 10mph, reports the Daily Mail.
Caroline Turner was finally stopped after more than an hour when patrol cars formed a rolling road block and an officer got out and ran alongside her, telling her to pull over.
The 76-year-old had been spotted driving the wrong way around a roundabout.
She then entered a dual carriageway but refused to pull over even though a following police car had switched on its flashing blue lights.
Officers say that even at its fastest, the pursuit never went above 20mph.
When the policeman jogging alongside shouted at the pensioner to pull over, she initially refused, saying: ‘There’s nothing to discuss. I’m going home.’
She was finally brought to a halt on the hard shoulder, however, where she was arrested and put in a cell overnight as officers feared she might cause a fatal accident if allowed to go free.
Turner appeared before magistrates in Colchester, Essex, the following day and was banned from driving for a year.
She was also fined £100 after admitting driving without due care and attention and failing to stop for police.
The widow, who has six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren and whose husband died five weeks ago, yesterday blamed poor lighting for the initial error and described herself as a careful driver who ‘never takes chances’.
‘I am not exonerating myself – my driving was not up to its usual high standards – but there was a lack of good lighting and I went the wrong way,’ she said at her £350,000 home in Romford, Essex.
‘It was a surprise to me when [the officer]knocked on the window.’
The chase began at 6pm on Tuesday when Turner, an accomplished artist whose works have been exhibited at the Royal Academy, was on her way home from a friend’s house in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex.
As she drove her Ford Fiesta through the village of Weeley other vehicles were forced to take evasive action as she drove the wrong way around the roundabout.
Magistrate Barry Wheatcroft told her: ‘The safety of the public is paramount and your driving was… careless and bordered on dangerous.’
The pensioner insisted her experience had not put her off driving. ‘I am planning for my re-test already,’ she said. ‘But for the next year I am going to be catching buses.’