AT 70mph ON BUSY M90, SHE SENT TEXT ..THIS WAS THE RESULT; Exclusive Driver smashed into car with kids.

Byline: By Jack Mathieson

A WOMAN driver was text messaging when she smashed into a car carrying two young kids at 70mph.

Deborah Sillar caused Paul and Claire Murray's Volvo, with two children inside, to roll over three times before crashing upside down on a hard shoulder.

Sillar's car flipped and landed beside the central reservation.

Amazingly, the couple escaped with cuts and bruises. But Paul insisted they were lucky to be alive.

Bar worker Sillar, 20, was yesterday banned from the roads for 18 months and fined pounds 750 for dangerous driving.

Last night, Paul said: "Had it not been for luck and the fact I was driving a Volvo, we would be dead - all because she wanted to send a text."

Sillar, who also escaped serious injury, told Dunfermline Sheriff Court she could remember little about the lead up to the accident on the M90 near Kelty in Fife.

But another motorist said he saw her holding a flip-top phone at arm's length half a mile from the crash scene.

Sillar's phone records showed she sent a text and received one

around the time of the accident last September.

Sheriff Craig McSherry found Sillar, of Dunfermline, Fife, guilty and told her: "I am satisfied the evidence points to you having used your phone while driving.

"We have evidence from you that the speed was 70mph."

He added: "It is extremely fortunate that severe injury or even worse was not caused."

The couple had been heading home to Dunfermline after a day in Perth when Sillar's Metro veered across the road and hit them. After the crash, Paul was able to pass the six-year-old boy and three-year-old girl out the car to helpers before getting his wife out and climbing out himself.

Paul said the impact seemed to go on forever and said the accident is haunting them.

He said: "The memories are very vivid. It was quite surreal and we were wondering when it was going to end."

He added: "I don't want to sound self-righteous because she is just young, but to text while driving is just plain daft.

"She was in a collision course from the moment she started to veer across the carriageway and she did nothing to correct it. That suggests to me she did not have her eyes on the road.

"The front windscreen was ruptured but did not come in, but the back windows were smashed.

"I got cuts where I passed the children out of the back windows between bits of broken glass.

"I have managed to put it behind me, but my wife is no longer a confident driver."

Motorist Charles Sneddon said he was going home from work when he passed Sillar.

He told the court: "It seemed to be just crawling past me as though it was only going one or two miles an hour faster than me.

"I looked across and saw the driver with a mobile phone in her hand."

Depute fiscal Azrah Yousaf asked Sillar if she had been texting. She said: "I could have been receiving a message."

The fiscal asked: "Could you have replied?" Sillar said: "Possibly, possibly not."

Sillar, who was ordered to re-sit her test, refused to comment as she left court.

CAPTION(S):

DANGER: Sillar, leaving court. Right, her overturned car and, far right, the Volvo