Driver fled to lap dance club

The Comet
09 February 2006

A COMPANY director who caused a motorway pile-up fled the scene and drove to a lap dancing club. There, Peter Aldred, 41, boasted to two pretty dancers how he had made off from the crash site leaving a dazed driver in the middle of the carriageway. The dancers, Nikki Wright, 23, and her friend Zoe Young, 27, were so appalled by Aldred's drunken boasts that they decided to shop him. As Zoe performed a £60 "VIP dance" for Aldred "to keep him occupied", Nikki alerted the management at the Spearmint Rhino Club in Slough who contacted the police.Aldred was still standing at the bar a short while later when police burst in and arrested him.
The story was revealed when Aldred appeared at St Albans Crown Court on Tuesday to admit a charge of dangerous driving. The company executive, of Oakfield Avenue, Hitchin, had been behind the wheel of his Subaru Impreza as he drove in the outside lane of the M25 in the early hours of March 22 last year. Just before the junction with the M1, he was travelling at around 75mph when he lost control and hit a Smart Car in the middle lane that was being driven by bus driver Doug Saker. The impact sent Mr Saker's vehicle veering sideways into a lorry [truck] in the inside lane. The collision left Mr Saker's vehicle a mangled write-off and he ended up dazed and confused on the hard shoulder. The lorry also came to a halt, but Aldred, after stopping briefly in the central lane, drove off suddenly as Mr Saker walked up to the car. Barrister Charles Judge, defending, said his client had been driving when he dropped a sandwich he had been eating and, in trying to pick it up, had collided with Mr Saker's vehicle. Judge Marie Catterson decided to adjourn the case for three weeks so that a pre-sentence report on Aldred can be prepared. She told Aldred: "All options are open to this case."She said the fact that she was granting him bail to the next appearance "doesn't mean anything as far as sentence is concerned". Outside the court, Mr Saker said: "I couldn't believe my eyes when it (the Subaru) drove off. It was such a despicable thing to do."I could have been badly injured, but he didn't know that. I remember thinking, 'You b.....d'."
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