A PENSIONER was driving with his legs crossed seconds before he crashed into the back of a tipper lorry on a notorious Hampshire road, killing his girlfriend, jurors heard.

Michael Stewart, 77, had his left foot on the accelerator to help relieve back pain when he moved out to overtake the truck on the A338 in the New Forest, Southampton Crown Court heard.

But he had to pull back because of oncoming traffic and could not get his feet untangled in time to stop his car smashing into the lorry.

His partner, Linda Williams, died at the scene of the crash near Breamore on the Ringwood- Salisbury road on April 29 last year. Prosecutor Maria Lamb told Southampton Crown Court that Stewart’s Vauxhall Astra estate was following a lorry, which in turn was behind a Land Rover Freelander.

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Its driver, Jacqueline Parker, received a call on her mobile phone and stopped in the centre of the road to turn into a layby on the opposite side to answer the call.

Though he was also using a mobile phone, the lorry driver, who had been driving at 45mph, was able to stop behind her.

Ms Lamb said the driver following Stewart saw him veer to his offside as though to overtake the lorry and then swerve back. She didn’t see the brake lights come on until the few seconds before it hit the truck.

The force of the collision was such the lorry ended up on the grass verge and the Astra’s suspension collapsed.

Stewart told an ambulance man and a doctor he had been suffering from back pain and had been driving with his left foot on the accelerator. He saw the lorry brake but he didn’t have enough time to untangle his feet to prevent a collision.

Stewart, from Hemel Hempstead, denies causing the death of his 62-year-old passenger by dangerous driving.

Proceeding.