MATTHEW Roger Stone was under the influence of a combination of cocaine and cannabis when his car crossed to the wrong side of Wangi Road, bounced off a safety barrier and then careered head-on into a car, seriously injuring the female driver and her 12-year-old daughter.
Stone, 48, of Bonnells Bay, was last week jailed for a maximum of 12 months, with a non-parole period of six months after he pleaded guilty to two counts of dangerous driving occasioning grievous bodily harm and driving with an illicit drug present in his blood.
But a short time later, Stone re-appeared back in Newcastle Local Court where he was granted conditional bail pending a severity appeal in Newcastle District Court next month.
Stone was heading home from New Lambton on April 29, 2018, and was approaching a slight left-hand bend on Wangi Road when his Holden Commodore station wagon crossed entirely into the eastbound lanes.
A driver heading the other way had to take "evasive action", pulling onto the wrong side of the road to avoid a head-on crash with Stone's car. "[Stone] seemed to be looking straight ahead," the other driver later told police. "There was no time for me to hit the horn."
Stone's car crossed the eastbound lanes and collided with a safety barrier, glancing back onto Wangi Road where it crashed head-on with the front passenger side of another vehicle.
"I was coming over the crest and lost control of the car," Stone said when questioned about the cause of the crash. "I started to drift into the other lane and tried to correct it, then my car started to drift the other way so I tried to correct it again but I lost control. It was my fault."
The female driver suffered a dislocated ankle and fractured leg and may never get full movement back in her ankle. Her daughter suffered extensive bruising to her chest and abdomen and a perforated bowel.
Paramedics who arrived on scene told police that Stone disclosed to them that he had "consumed cocaine and cannabis the night before", according to court documents. But when later spoken to by police Stone said he could not recall saying that and had not used illicit drugs for six to eight months before the crash.
A toxicology report revealed Stone had cocaine and cannabis in his system, with forensic pharmacologist Dr Judith Pearl opining that at the time Stone was driving there would have been some impairment to his driving ability.
