A man lured police into a car chase in order to be sent back to jail as he struggled to cope with life outside of prison following the death of his mother, a court heard. Andrew Reid, 40, of Greenwich Avenue, east Hull, was given 20 months in prison for dangerous driving and other motoring offences at Hull Crown Court on 26 August, with a judge telling him it was down to “good fortune” that no one was killed or injured due to his driving.
At around 8.35pm on 17 July 2026, Reid prompted a police pursuit which saw him drive towards Hull City Centre at 77mph in a 30mph limit zone, and 71mph in a 20mph zone. He repeatedly crossed onto the wrong side of the carriageway and drove in the opposite direction to oncoming traffic. The chase saw him driving the wrong way around a roundabout and he undertook vehicles using a cycle lane.
Prosecutor Stephen Welch said Reid “crossed onto the other side of the carriageway, nearly colliding with an oncoming vehicle.” The pursuit ended when he crashed, damaging a fence, and Reid fled the scene on foot. He initially denied he was the driver when questioned by police. At a hearing on 19 August, Reid pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, driving while disqualified, using a motor vehicle without insurance and failing to provide a specimen for analysis.
Holly Thompson, defending, said Reid was “under no illusion that he has an unenviable criminal record”. She said her client was lacking a support network after the death of his mother while Reid was in prison. When he was released from prison, Reid “went into self destruct mode”, “relapsed into drug use” and “wanted to go back to prison as soon as possible”. She said her client acknowledges his actions were “utterly stupid”.
“He wanted the police to chase him, because he knew that at the end of that journey when the police would arrest him he would be going to go back to prison. That was entirely what he wanted,” she said.
Sentencing Reid to 20 months in prison, Recorder Gordon Stables said: “You chose to take a motor car onto the roads of this city when you were already disqualified from driving. You were uninsured. When the police tried to stop you, you embarked on a long and determined attempt to escape. The roads upon which you drove were city streets, they were not race tracks.” He added that the roads were “used by ordinary men and women going about their daily lives”, and “families, pedestrians, motorists” who were “entitled to expect that those who drive motor vehicles will do so with proper regard for their safety”.
“You showed no such regard,” he told Reid, saying the defendant drove at “grossly excessive speeds”. He sentenced Reid to 18 months in prison for dangerous driving, two months for driving without insurance and one month for failing to provide a specimen, to run concurrently. He gave Reid an additional two months for driving while disqualified, to run consecutively.
Recorder Stables said “it was an act of good fortune and nothing more that no one was killed or seriously injured”. Reid, who was out of prison on licence, was returned to custody and will serve his existing sentence, due to end in 2030.
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