A TATTOOED car valeter suspected of drug driving told police he couldn’t provide a blood sample – because he was scared of needles.

But magistrates threw out Bradley Cole’s needle phobia defence, saying he had not provided enough medical evidence.

The 26-year-old, of Trowbridge Court, represented himself at the Swindon Magistrates’ Court trial.

He said “that’s me done then, I give up” as JPs delivered the guilty verdict. He claimed the 12-month driving ban imposed by the court would kill off his car valeting business.

The court heard police had pulled Cole’s VW Caddy over in Pinehurst on August 18 last year and ordered a roadside drugs wipe as they suspected he had been taking cannabis.

The spot test came back positive for cannabis and Cole was taken to Gablecross police station. Normal procedure is for those suspected of drug driving to give a sample of blood, taken by a nurse and sent off for analysis at the police lab. But Cole refused, citing a long-standing phobia of needles.

Body-worn camera footage played in the court showed PC Luke Hobbs pointing out that Cole was “full of tattoos”. But Cole said a hypodermic needle and the tattooists' needle were “not the same thing”.

It was a point Cole expanded upon from the witness stand. He told the court: “It’s completely different. You could ask any tattoo artist they’d say the same. It’s not the same thing as an injection. You’re not taking anything out, you’re not putting any fluid into your veins. It’s just scraping the surface. If you could get the blood sample from a tattoo I’d happily do it.”

He had been scared of needles for as long as he could remember, he said. When it came to being vaccinated at school he would have to be held down by friends.

His fear of needles was so bad he had refused dental treatment in 2016 – and four years on still hadn’t had the teeth removed.

Cole claimed police had previously offered him the option of providing a urine sample as an alternative to the phial of blood. It was explained by the magistrates’ legal adviser that accepting urine rather than blood was at the police’s discretion.

He reacted angrily when, during cross examination, prosecutor Ben Worthington said: “Nobody has diagnosed you with a phobia of needles.”

The only medical evidence Cole produced in his defence was a letter from Smiles Dental simply stating that he had refused treatment in March 2016 because he had a needle phobia. Cole had not been able to get evidence from his old doctors’ surgery.

Magistrates found Cole guilty of failing to provide a sample of blood for analysis. He was fined £180, ordered to pay £300 costs and a £32 victim surcharge and handed a year-long driving ban.

Did Cole have a 'reasonable excuse'?

BRADLEY Cole claimed his needle phobia meant he had a reasonable excuse to refuse a police blood test. And while he was right that it can be a legal defence, it’s a difficult one to prove.

In 2016, the High Court set out the grounds by which someone accused of a driving offence could advance the needle phobia defence.

Sir Duncan Ouseley, the judge who heard the case, said it was not enough for a suspect to simply say he had a needle phobia. “It would otherwise be very easy for a person to assert during the course of the specimen taking procedure that he had an illness and it would be a very large task for the prosecution then to have to disprove all of that,” he said.

Older cases suggest that a defendant must provide written medical evidence from a doctor showing they suffer from a phobia.