A mother today told how her son was lucky to be alive after he was seriously injured in an accident with a drink driver.

Geeta Blanchard called for zero tolerance on drink driving after her 20-year-old son Paul suffered multiple injuries in the crash in Apperley Bridge.

He spent three weeks in Bradford Royal Infirmary and still walks with a limp following the accident in Harrogate Road last August.

Yesterday Simon Adam Spencer, 33, of Meadway, Bradford, pleaded guilty to drink driving at Bradford Magistrates.

The court heard he was twice the limit when he gave a blood sample to police following the accident, in which his two women passengers were also badly injured.

Mrs Blanchard, of Greengates, who is a customer relations manager at call centre company Loop in Thornbury, said after the case that she found it hard to understand how anyone could have a drink and get behind the wheel.

"I am very angry to think that I could have lost my son because somebody was so stupid," she said.

"I want zero tolerance where drinking and driving is concerned.

"We want to get on with our lives. We want Paul to be able to walk how he used to walk and not have a permanent reminder of how close he came to dying."

Spencer also admitted driving the Ford Sierra without insurance and driving without a licence.

A charge of dangerous driving was dropped by the prosecution. He was bailed until sentencing next month and banned from driving in the interim period.

Paul, a mortgage advisor at First Direct Bank in Leeds, praised the people who helped him from the wreckage of his Peugeot 106 which was pouring with smoke.

"I thought I was going to die and I was screaming and then somebody pulled me out," he said.

"I wouldn't let the guy who pulled me out leave me. He kept telling me I was going to be okay."

His right leg was pinned in an operation and has two screws and staples to hold the bone in place and he had to learn to walk again. He also had a metal plate put in his right arm and lost a stone and a half through the shock.

"The nurses were brilliant. I can't thank the hospital staff enough.

"And work have been brilliant, sending me cards and ringing me up and telling me to take time off until I am better."

Paul, a former Hanson School pupil, said he felt angry he had suffered such pain and now needed weekly physiotherapy. "It is annoying because I passed my test and I stopped drinking," he said. "If you know you are driving you should not drink."