A waitress at a bar in Fontvieille had a narrow escape when she took the wheel of her Smart car after drinking with a customer, Monaco’s Criminal Court was told. Four months pregnant at the time, she crashed her car into road signs, zig-zagged across white lines and ended up lying in the road. She had a blood alcohol level of 1.78 g per litre.

The defendant told the court she still had glass from the smashed windscreen in her head, and she added that it was fortunate that she did not kill anyone and she could keep her unborn child.

Pointing out that the car had been driven on the left-hand side of the road for several minutes and had overturned several times, the public prosecutor asked for a sentence of two months suspended and three fines of €45 each.

“As her child is going to be born,” Cyrielle Colle said, “it is not medically possible to pronounce a prison sentence, but she has a problem with alcohol.”

The defence lawyer added that the defendant’s boyfriend had left her and she had been fired from her job. The court acquiesced.