A WOMAN who suffered serious injuries after her Ford Ka collided head on with a delivery van on the A65 near Settle has been found guilty of dangerous driving by Skipton magistrates.

Harriet Ridley, 31, a freelance props maker for children’s television and part time circus performer, suffered a broken arm, three fractured vertebrae, in addition to other injuries, and had to be cut out of her car before being taken by air ambulance to hospital.

She spent more than a week in hospital, following the accident on February 2, and is still receiving treatment more than seven months later, the court was told on Tuesday.

Ridley had attempted to phone her mother shortly before the accident - to tell her about the job interview she had just had at her old school in Giggleswick - and had taken one hand off the steering wheel to move her rucksack, which had fallen off the passenger seat.

She failed to negotiate a bend in the road near the Settle railway junction while her eyes were off the road, and drove straight into the path of a van, the court heard.

In a statement, the driver of the Mercedes Sprinter van, John Shaw, who was on his way to deliver water to Giggleswick school, said as he approached a bend in the road, a car came towards him, entirely on his side of the carriageway. He swerved, but was unable to avoid a collision. He said he went over to the Ka, which was badly damaged and had smoke coming from its engine. He turned the engine off, and removed the keys from the ignition.

The driver, he said, was saying ‘get me out’ and also ‘I am sorry’ He attempted to reassure her, before returning to his own vehicle and removing the card containing dashcam footage of the accident.

Emma Lee, who was driving a car ahead immediately ahead of Ridley, described seeing in her rear view mirror the van swerve across the road and hearing a loud bang.

She called emergency services, and went to the Ka and spoke to Ridley, who she saw was badly injured.

“I asked her what had happened, I shouldn’t have done really, but I did, and she said she was not sure, but one minute she was on the phone, and the next minute, she was on the other side of the road.”

Ms Lee said she later thought about what the woman had said, and thought she might have been ‘hands free’ on the phone, and had not had it in her hand at the time.

John Mewies, for Ridley, who denied dangerous driving, argued his client accepted careless driving, in that her driving ‘fell below’ and not ‘very far below’ that of a careful and competent driver. She had made the call while waiting at traffic lights before joining the A65.

But magistrates said while accepting she was a ‘good person’, and that it had been a ‘one off’ Ridley had been distracted by a phone conversation and by her falling rucksack, which had led to a lack of attention, and her car ‘drifting’ across the carriageway.

Ridley, of Old Moat Lane, Manchester, was banned from driving for 12 months and fined £300. She will also have to pay costs of £170 and a surcharge of £30. Following her ban, and before she gets her licence back, she will have to take an extended driving test.