A MAN who claimed his driving was "reckless" but not dangerous has been convicted by a jury.

Shaun Smith had stood trial at Winchester Crown Court on Monday, charged with dangerous driving after he was involved in a crash on the A303 slip road last year.

The court heard he was driving his black Volkswagen Golf along the slip road from the M3 at Junction 8, when he was tailgated by a blue Skoda Octavia.

Rather than moving back to the inside lane and allowing the "lunatic behind [him to] get out of the way", prosecutor Janice Brennan said that Smith had acted dangerously in applying his brakes.

When the Skoda, driven by Stuart Townsend, moved to the outside lane and attempted to undertake him, she told Winchester Crown Court that he sped up and matched the speed of the other driver.

And it was seconds later when the Skoda had caught up with slower moving traffic that Townsend veered across into the front of the 45-year-old's Golf, flipping his own car and ending up on its roof in a ditch on the side of the carriageway.

Having denied dangerous driving, the jury returned a guilty verdict on Tuesday.

During the trial, which lasted a little over an hour on Monday afternoon, Miss Brennan admitted that it was Townsend who had "started it" and was responsible for the "main blame", but said that both men had driven dangerously.

The court heard that when police arrived on the scene of the crash, at Junction 8 of the M3 on March 2, 2020, Smith had told officers that "it was a bit of a case of chicken".

He said he "couldn't go anywhere", which Miss Brennan said was incorrect as "there was room for him to" move over.

Jurors were also shown dashcam footage captured by a motorist on the slip road at the same time, after which Smith, of Malpass Down in Worthy Down, admitted in hindsight his driving was "reckless" and that a sensible driver would have just let the Skoda pass.

He told the court: "My perception was that I would be immediately behind another car, and then having to pull right.

"Seeing the dashcam it is very clear that I would have to pull right again. I was waiting to get past the other cars. I wouldn’t say there was plenty of it, but there was space.

"I was doing the speed limit, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was maintaining course.

"I can see it was reckless but I didn't consider it to be dangerous."