A 90-year-old retired doctor with failing eyesight and confusion who ploughed into a car head-on and killed a man while driving on the wrong side of a dual carriageway in Hampshire has been given a nine-month suspended sentence.

Dr Turner Waddell took a wrong turn on the A30 in the dark between Hook and Basingstoke and ended up travelling south on the northbound carriageway. Terrified drivers told police they flashed their lights and hit their horns to try and warn Waddell as he drove his Volvo at 60mph in the wrong fast lane on March 11 last year.

After about a mile, Waddell smashed into Neil Colquhoun's Vauxhall Vectra as he drove from his work as a temp back home to Hook along the A30.

Winchester Crown Court was told Mr Colquhoun had just overtaken a car in the fast lane along with another car in front of him and that vehicle had just got back into the slow lane when Waddell's Volvo came around a bend and the collision occurred.

Mr Colquhoun's car then hit another car and burst into flames. He was killed by the collision and not the flames, the court heard.

Waddell and his wife, who were on their way to the theatre in Basingstoke from their then home in Andover Down, were also seriously injured and were dragged from their smoking car by other motorists, who bravely ignored the risks.

Waddell, who had a clean driving licence, had also suffered a subdural haematoma he was unaware of before the accident and had been confused prior to the crash.

He pleaded guilty to causing death by careless driving at an earlier hearing.

Judge Keith Cutler suspended the sentence for two years and disqualified Waddell from driving for life.

Speaking outside court, Mr Colquhoun's mother Patricia said that the doctor should not have been behind the wheel. ''Through this lack of foresight my son, who had a wealth of friends and family who loved him dearly, and who had just started a new job with such high hopes and plans for the future, has been so cruelly robbed.''