Vanessa O’Donnell: P-plate speedster narrowly missed pedestrians in Crestmead

A 20-year-old Waterford West P-plate driver charged with dangerously operation a vehicle told the court she was just having some fun.

A 20-year-old Waterford West P-plate driver charged with dangerously operation a vehicle told the court she was just having some fun.

Vanessa Kathleen O’Donnell, 20, pleaded guilty in Beenleigh Magistrates Court on Thursday to the charge of dangerous operation of a vehicle.

Vanessa Kathleen O’Donnell. Picture: Facebook

The court heard the red P-plate driver had been driving her red Holden utility along Magnesium Drive, Crestmead where a large gathering of people was occurring by the road about 8.30pm on August 26.

Police allege she was first spotted driving northbound on Rai Dr and continued on Magnesium Drive at close to the 60km speed limit.

She then conducted sudden a U-turn and accelerated heavily at 100km/h while driving past a group of people standing along the road, narrowly missing them.

Police were able to get the incident captured on video and identified the vehicle involved and checks revealed it belonged to O’Donnell.

The court heard O’Donnell had a relatively short traffic history including speeding and driving unaccompanied.

Magistrate Terry Duroux asked O’Donnell, who was representing herself in court, to explain her reasons for this kind of offending and the 20-year-old simply replied: “It’s fun.”

“It’s not fun, it’s life threatening,” Magistrate Duroux said.

“If something untoward occurred you could have mowed down some of those people that were standing in proximity, say there’s one or two deaths, you’d be on a vehicular manslaughter type charge and be locked up at the moment.

“You young people don’t think about this.”

“You thought you may have been travelling at 80km/h, in my view whatever speed you were travelling at was absolutely outrageous.”

She was ordered to pay a $1000 fine and disqualified from driving for nine months. No conviction was recorded.