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A diabetic driver who failed to test herself properly before ploughing into a cyclist was jailed today for 16 months as a judge branded her ‘an accident waiting to happen’.

Penny Mair zig-zagged across the road after she had lost consciousness before careering into Robert Chick.

The 52-year-old suffered serious injuries and needed to learn to walk again after the accident in April 2013 in Blackpool, Lancashire.

Mair, 42, with an unblemished driving record, was locked up at Preston Crown Court as a judge insisted it should serve as a deterrent to stop other diabetic motorists from driving irresponsibly.

She had been suffering three attacks a day in 2006, but refused to go to hospital, it was heard, and in 2011, she had a hypoglycemic seizure in her car, but could not be roused.

Judge Heather Lloyd said: “It is fortunate the cyclist was not killed. This was an accident waiting to happen.

“The decision to drive was dangerous. You know you are liable to have hypoglycemic episodes and yet you drove with your mother and daughter as passengers.

“This matter is so serious that only immediate custody is appropriate, not just as a punishment, but a deterrent to others who may risk lives when driving while wholly unfit to do so.

“There are five such fatal crashes a year and forty five serious ones. Many go unreported.”

Mair, who admitted causing serious injury by dangerous driving, was banned for five years and must take a further test to get behind the wheel again.

Mr Chick, who told police, ‘I remember flying through the air’, sustained broken ribs, a right lung puncture and broken legs which needed screws and plates to be inserted.