A speeding driver told Malmesbury magistrates that she would not drive a car again until the end of the war. And she also intended passing a driving test as well.

Provisional licence holder, Mrs Ethne M Williams of 27 Bath Road was disqualified from driving for two years and fined £5 following a collision with an army ambulance on the Pewsey-Marlborough Road near Gipsy Corner.

Mrs Williams, who hit the ambulance and then veered across the road and crashed into a tree, admitted she might have gone round the bend at too fast a speed.

Acting in her defence, Mr Parker said that it would cost a considerable amount to repair the car, and that his client had sustained cuts to her face. She had been punished to a certain extent already for her lack of experience, he said, and the accident had upset her so that she had decided she would not drive again until the end of the war and until she had passed a driving test.

Two accidents in Swindon this week included a collision between a Bristol bus and a horse drawn bread van in Marlborough Road. A delivery boy named Graver of 119 Westcott Place was injured and taken to the Victoria Hospital. Meanwhile on Cricklade Street a lorry load of straw collapsed and the pavement was blocked with trusses of straw.