Death crash doctor's nine-year ban for drink-driving
A doctor once jailed for killing a man in a drunken car crash has been banned from driving for nine years after she was caught drink-driving again.
Retired GP Elizabeth Crabbie served five years in prison over the fatal crash in 2000.
However, the 68-year-old admitted driving while twice the legal limit in Comrie on 26 July last year.
As well as the ban, she was ordered to carry out 240 hours of unpaid work and attend alcohol treatment.
Crabbie told Perth Sheriff Court she had fallen out with her husband and had driven to the shops to buy barbeque food.
She had been drinking the night before and had had "a couple of glasses of wine" that afternoon.
The pensioner was seen to be unsteady on her feet as she got out of her Subaru Impreza, and alcohol was detected on her breath.
Crabbie was previously convicted of causing the death of children's author Graeme Cook in a car crash in April 2000.
She was found to be three times over the then drink-drive limit when she drove down the wrong side of the road on the A94 between Perth and Forfar, colliding head-on with Mr Cook's car and killing him instantly.
She was jailed for five years and banned from the road for 10 years, but Sheriff William Wood said it seemed she had not learned from the experience.
He said: "This is obviously a very serious matter, involving as it does another drink driving offence. Your past is something that will colour everything you do for ever more.
"It is important that you learn from that experience - but unfortunately it seems that the experience hasn't really had that effect on you.
"The saving grace is that you have not been in trouble since then and for that reason alone I will deal with it other than by a custodial sentence."