M5: Victim has nightmares after wrong-way crash

Carly Pope describes her injuries as "life-changing"

A woman says her life has been destroyed after a drink driver who was travelling the wrong way down a motorway crashed into her car.

Carly Pope, 30, from Bristol, was injured when Dorothy Denny's car crashed into hers on the M5 in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.

Ms Pope suffered a broken arm in two places, whiplash, cuts, bruises and soft tissue damage.

"It has changed my life forever," she said.

"Everything I do hurts, I am trying my best to pull through but I am in pain all the time," Ms Pope added.

"I am not angry anymore, mostly I am just sad."

Denny, who was driving a Mini Cooper, also crashed into two HGVS.

A male passenger in Ms Pope's Vauxhall Astra suffered whiplash and bruising.

"I have been unable eat or sleep or maintain a normal routine at all because my entire life was destroyed by this accident," Ms Pope said.

Officer in the case, PC Stuart Dudfield said it was a miracle that no-one died in the crash.

Denny was three times over the legal drink-drive limit

Denny was sentenced at Gloucester Crown Court for causing serious injury by dangerous driving and drink driving on 19 May.

She was given a 20-month suspended prison sentence, a £10,000 fine and banned from driving for 10 years.

Denny sustained broken ribs. A police breathalyser test showed she was over three times the legal drink-drive limit.

The driver and passenger of the white Astra were injured in the crash

In a police impact statement, Ms Pope, who is a personal trainer from Bristol, said it had affected her confidence and her career.

"Following the incident I have had breakdowns as a passenger on the motorway at night, I have vivid nightmares when I do manage to sleep and I don't feel as though I will ever be as confident a driver as I once was," she said

Dorothy Denny's Mini Cooper struck an Astra and two HGVs

She added that she had been signed off from work by a doctor three times and her mental health has declined.

"Before the accident I have suffered with my mental health and the gym is what I used to cope with the things that go on in my head, so having that taken away from me meant that my mental health rapidly declined," she said.

The scene of the crash on the M5

Gloucestershire Police said Denny admitted consuming alcohol before driving to the BP garage on Ashchurch Road in Tewkesbury to buy milk and more alcohol.

After leaving the forecourt she said she turned left instead of right for her home address, then went around the roundabout in order to get back off at Ashchurch Road.

But instead of getting off at the exit, she accidentally took the prior left-hand turn, the M5 southbound off-slip, and then travelled up the motorway on the southbound side.

Dorothy Denny was ordered to pay a £10,000 fine

Believing herself to be in lane one but actually in lane three, she carried on driving against the flow of traffic for over two miles before colliding head on with the Astra and striking both HGVS.

PC Dudfield said the injuries Ms Pope suffered were severe, on top of the lasting trauma she has described.

"In all my years' experience in roads policing this has got to be one of the starkest examples of what can happen when you drink drive or drive whilst impaired," he said.