A Mazda driver scattered revellers as his car mounted the pavement then hit almost 50mph as it sped away.

Toby Stewart, 26, accepted his driving in central Henley in the early hours of March 7, 2020, was careless - in that it fell below the standard expected of a competent and careful driver.

But a jury thought the standard of the Woodcote man’s driving was worse, convicting him at Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday (March 15) of dangerous driving.

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The court heard Stewart was behind the wheel of a Mazda RX-8 sports car when he turned left onto Bell Street from the Waitrose car park.

CCTV caught him mounting the pavement for a few seconds then driving off at speed. An expert crash investigator instructed by the defence had calculated his average speed as 29mph, but noted that the car topped 49mph at one point.

Eyewitness Jack Gill, who described himself as ‘tipsy’ after a meal and drinks out with friends, was walking along Bell Street when he saw a man with a bloodied forehead on the other side of the road.

He went to see if the man was alright, he said, then heard a revving engine and a ‘bit of wheel spin’.

A car came out of the junction from the Kings Road car park, mounted the kerb with – he thought – two wheels on the pavement, drove along the pavement for a short time then sped away down the road.

Pedestrians had ‘scattered’ out the way. Mr Gill told jurors that he could not say whether they would have been hit had they not moved back.

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The defendant, who had two previous convictions for relatively minor driving offences, did not give evidence to the trial.

However, crash investigator Christopher Goddard said the account that Stewart gave to police that the car oversteered at the junction and he lost control of the vehicle was ‘plausible’. The vehicle had a powerful rotary engine, which would rev at speeds of up to 900rpm.

After the jury returned their verdict, Recorder John Bate-Williams told them that, earlier in the evening, the defendant and his friends had been involved in an altercation with another group at cocktail bar Magoos.

The judge concluded that Stewart had either given in to the temptation to ‘show off the decibel’ level of his car or he had been in a ‘hurry to leave the area’ after his experience in the bar.

“A car is a potentially lethal weapon and you lost control of your vehicle,” he told the defendant.

He adjourned sentencing until Friday, March 24.

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