A drink driver has been banned and given a suspended jail sentence after he caused a five car pile-up by going the wrong way up the A38 dual carriageway.

Andrew Beavers blamed the navigation app Waze for sending him straight into the path of oncoming traffic on the Devon Expressway in the early hours of New Year’s Eve last year.

One of the drivers whose car was wrecked estimated that Beavers had been driving at 100 mph and seemed completely unaware of the cars heading towards him.

Police described a scene of ‘devastation and destruction’ after his black Land Rover Discovery hit four other vehicles at high speed on the Eastbound carriageway near Buckfastleigh.

Beavers had to be freed from his car by firefighters and one of the other drivers needed hospital treatment for a broken wrist and cuts to his back caused by flying glass. He is still being treated for the psychological trauma of the crash.

Three of the passengers in the other vehicles were teenaged girls and all were said to have been shocked by the accident. Seven people were injured in total.

Beavers had been abstinent from alcohol for nine years since having a liver transplant but had had a drink after arguing with his partner at their home near Sidmouth. He set off to visit his daughter in Cornwall but got lost after turning off the A38 near Ashburton.

He re-entered the road heading back towards Exeter and there were a string of near-misses before the massive pile up in which he hit three cars and a van.

Rescuers from Buckfastleigh fire station took pictures of the scene and posted them on their Facebook page to show the extent of the destruction.

Beavers, aged 55, formerly of Capper Close, Newton Poppleford, but now of Woodbury, admitted dangerous driving and  driving a vehicle while unfit through drink.

He was jailed for eight months, suspended for two years, banned from driving for 18 months, and ordered to pay £2,250 compensation to the nine drivers and passengers from the other cars by Judge David Evans at Exeter Crown.

He told him: “It seems you were unaware until the last moment  that you were on the wrong side of the road. I sentence you on the basis it was not deliberate.

“One doesn’t find oneself driving. It is a choice, even if it is a poor one which might not have been made without emotional instability and without you having alcohol on board.

“Driving a night on the wrong side of a dual carriageway is one thing. Doing so at excessive speed and while under the influence of alcohol is another.

“It was sheer good fortune that no-one was seriously injured. If they had been, you would be going straight to prison

Beth Rickerby, prosecuting, said the traffic officer who arrived at the scene first described it as ‘total devastation and destruction’ with five vehicles substantially damaged.

Beavers blew a roadside test of 54 microgrammes in breath, the limit being 35. He told one witness that he had been ‘following Waze and it had taken him on the wrong side of the road’.

Althea Brooks, defending, said Beavers had not drunk for nine years but consumed alcohol that night after an argument at home which led him to set off to stay with his daughter in Cornwall without realising he was unfit to drive.

She said he works as a logistics manager and Airbnb host and is a devout churchgoer who has been praying for the victims of the accident and was horrified to hear that one had suffered a broken wrist and psychological trauma.

She said Beavers has no previous convictions, has a history of serious poor health, and that he is completely remorseful for his actions that night, which were totally out of character.