Man drove with smashed windscreen—court warns it was like driving blindfold

A 70-year-old admitted dangerous driving after smashing his windscreen while taking a car to a scrap yard. The court fined him and banned him from driving for up to 2 years.

A motorist who drove with a smashed windscreen by leaning his head out of the window has been warned he might as well have been driving blindfold.

Dragoslav Vasic, 70, of Vauvert in St Peter Port, appeared before the Magistrate’s Court after admitting counts of dangerous driving, using a vehicle without insurance, and driving a car in a dangerous condition.. The case turned on what he could not see—and how long the court felt it took before the risk became obvious.

Prosecuting Advocate Phoebe Cobb told the court that a witness saw Vasic driving a red Jaguar S-type through St Peter Port at about 3.30pm.. The windscreen was smashed, there was no rear window, and the driver was described as looking ahead by sticking his head out of the driver’s side window.. The witness reported that the car mounted the kerb several times along the way.. A second person later called police to report the same sight.

Deputy Judge Graeme McKerrell said the danger was plain enough that the driver did not need hindsight to understand what could happen.. “You might just as well have been driving blindfold at night with a paper bag over your head for good measure to make sure you couldn’t see,” he told Vasic.. “You didn’t need to be a fortune teller to see that an accident would happen.”

By about 3.50pm, a police officer who had been searching for the driver was directed to a road traffic collision in the Grange. Officers found Vasic’s vehicle after it had collided with a blue Nissan. When the officer asked Vasic for insurance documents, he was unable to provide them.

During a voluntary interview held later, Vasic admitted he was the driver.. He said he believed he was insured, and told the court he had been in a hurry to move the vehicle to a scrap yard.. The judge also noted that the driver’s plan extended further: Vasic had intended to take the car on to St Sampson’s.

That claim shaped how the court viewed both intention and choice.. The prosecution had effectively shown a sequence—broken visibility, repeated kerb mounting, and then a collision—while Vasic’s explanation tried to frame it as a practical relocation.. But the judge’s response was that urgency did not cancel responsibility, especially where visibility and legality were both compromised.

Vasic also asked for mercy regarding any licence suspension because he has a prosthetic leg.. The court still treated the offences as serious.. Deputy Judge McKerrell said Vasic had to be banned for a minimum of 12 months due to the uninsured nature of the driving and that there were no special reasons to depart from that approach.

In sentencing, the judge fined Vasic £1,400 for dangerous driving and imposed a two-year licence suspension.. A £600 penalty was added for using a vehicle without insurance, accompanied by an 18-month driving ban that was ordered to run concurrently with the main suspension.. A further six-month ban, also concurrent, was imposed for using the vehicle in a dangerous condition.

For Vasic, the practicalities of getting the car off the road were part of his plea.. He told the court he had tried to arrange removal by lorry, but said nobody had been picking up.. When he later spoke again, he said he had driven to the court and parked outside, asking whether he could drive it home.. The judge said he definitely could not, and that removal would have to be done through lawful means.

The human takeaway from the court’s language is stark: when the windscreen is smashed and vision is improvised, the risk shifts from “bad luck” to predictable harm.. Misryoum also notes that cases like this tend to resonate because they involve ordinary roads, ordinary other drivers, and the kind of impairment that cannot be safely managed by personal improvisation—especially at speed and at night or in poor light.