Nurse Susan Jean Brittain under influence of alcohol and cannabis when she caused crash in Leda

She is tasked with saving lives but a nurse nearly killed herself and several others — including a mother on the way to pick up her children from school — when she caused a three-car pile-up while drunk and stoned. Susan Jean Brittain was under the influence of alcohol and cannabis while speeding in Leda, near Rockingham, in a Suzuki SX4, drifting dangerously between lanes at 2pm on July 30 last year. As she went to change lanes she hit the left corner of a Volvo sedan in front before careening up the kerb and smashing into a Mazda 3 carrying Baldivis woman Angela Odeh, propelling the Mazda into a light pole. Brittain then crashed her car into a tree, which caught fire. Ms Odeh had to be cut from her car and was seriously injured including tendon damage to the left hand and right knee, friction burns and abrasions to her face. In the wake of the crash, Ms Odeh said she panicked that her children were with her, before remembering that she was on the way to their school. “When I was hit, the struts on my seat went forward, and then the back of the seat broke and flattened out, and I slid out from underneath the seatbelt and landed against the door in the rear passenger side,” she said. “My whole stomach is black, I’ve got one huge bruise all the way up my groin, then down by my knee there’s another big one, and that’s where you can see the seatbelt grazed me as I was sliding from underneath it.” Brittain was also badly injured and was flown to Fiona Stanley Hospital. Despite facing dangerous-driving charges she was not given a jail term. Blood tests revealed she had 11 ugL of cannabis in her system as well as being over the blood alcohol limit. In Rockingham Magistrate’s Court last week, Brittain pleaded guilty to two charges of dangerous driving causing bodily harm under the influence of alcohol and drugs, and one charge of driving under the influence. Magistrate Andrew Matthews said the offences were serious and “very difficult to excuse”. Mr Matthews also said Brittain was lucky she was not facing charges of dangerous driving causing death considering she “did not have the capacity to drive” at the time of the crash and that for Ms Odeh it would have been a “very frightening incident”. He cited her character references, which painted her as a nurse who usually put others first, as he fined her $3900.