A drunk trucker was filmed swerving down a dual carriageway then going through a red light, a court heard.

Robert Cox, 55, who was found to have wet himself when he was pulled from his lorry, had driven Mercedes HGV cab for up to 20 miles down the A41 then A34 before he came to a halt, Oxford Crown Court heard.

The lorry also hit dangerously low speeds down the A34 during the 25 minute escapade on the afternoon of January 8.

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He slowed to 10mph and at one stage even stepped on the dual carriageway. At another point, he drifted onto the verge – throwing mud behind him.

The lorry came off the main road at the Botley interchange then went through a red light at the roundabout, although miraculously struck no car coming in the other direction. Cox then rejoined the A34.

Prosecuting, John Waller said: “The only saving grace is the defendant did not have an accident. Naturally, with a heavy goods vehicle if there had been an accident it could have been catastrophic.”

When he was stopped, a breathalyser test showed he was more than three-times the legal drink drive limit. He had 106mcgs of alcohol in 100ml of breath, where the legal limit is 35.

Mr Waller said the defendant was found to have ‘wet himself while he was in the cab’.

Interviewed by the police, Cox could not explain why he had driven as he did. It later emerged he had started drink glasses of rum and coke from 11pm the previous evening and continued his binge the following day.

Cox, of Horton, near Leighton Buzzard, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court last month to dangerous driving and driving while over the drink drive limit. He had two previous convictions from the 1980s for unrelated matters.

Sentencing him to 12 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years, Judge Michael Gledhill KC said: “You could have been killed. More importantly, so could other people – innocent people – who were at grave risk as a result of your drunkenness.”

The judge acknowledged that many would say his decision to suspend the sentence was ‘far too lenient’.

However, he said a letter from Cox’s elderly landlords had ‘saved’ him from going to prison. The woman in whose house he had lodged for 13 years said he was her unofficial carer. She pondered: “If he disappears, God knows what will happen to the two of us.”

Mitigating, Christopher Pembridge described his client’s decision to drive drunk as a ‘catastrophic lapse of judgement’. He was said to have told his barrister: “This isn’t me, this isn’t what I’m like.”

The lorry driver, whose daughters and former partner had accompanied him to court and were sitting in the public gallery, had lost his job as a result of his conviction.

Cox was ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid work, wear an alcohol abstinence monitoring tag for 120 days and was banned from driving for three years. He must pass an extended test before he can drive again and was ordered to pay £185 in prosecution costs.