A DEPRESSED man narrowly escaped injury when he dramatically crashed his car in a country lane near Clevedon – whilst he was more than four times over the legal drink drive limit.

Michael Ansell, aged 42, took off a metre into the air after driving his car over a humpback bridge in Kennmoor Road before hitting a post and ending up in a ditch.

Another motorist, Phillip Hodder, ran to pull the man, of Summerhouse in Tickenham, out of the Perodua Kenari before calling police at 8.20pm.

Officers breathalysed him and found him to have 140mg of alcohol in 100ml of breath. The drink drive limit is 35mg.

At North Somerset Courthouse on Monday, Ansell pleaded guilty to a charge of drink driving.

He told magistrates he had been drinking heavily in the two hours prior to the incident on April 25 and had left his home to see his ex-girlfriend.

He said: “I don’t think I was driving that fast, ask anyone and they will say I drive like a grandad.

“But the next think I knew was this chap knocking on my window.”

Ansell said he was now getting help for his alcohol misuse from the Addiction Recovery Agency.

Magistrates adjourned the hearing for a pre-sentence report, warning Ansell they could send him to jail because of his high alcohol reading.