A CARELESS uninsured driver who crashed a luxury car into a Greenock bus stop has been hammered with fines totalling more than £2,000.

Joseph Greene lost control of the powerful BMW X5 vehicle, causing it to mount the pavement on Ingleston Street and collide with the stop.

Greene, 29 — who doesn't have a valid driving licence — then fled the scene.

He had to be tracked down by police prior to being arrested for multiple road traffic offences.

Sheriff Derek Hamilton told him: "People who make off from accidents are of concern because there is no way of knowing what condition they were in at the time."

Greene had originally been charged with driving dangerously and at excessive speed but this was dropped by prosecutors as part of a negotiated guilty plea.

He admitted a reduced charged of driving without due care and attention, as well as without insurance, without a licence to drive that class of vehicle, and failing to stop.

Sheriff Hamilton imposed a series of fines totalling £2,020.

He told Greene, of Greenock's Ann Street, that he must pay at a rate of £100 per week.

The lawman warned: "If you miss a single instalment you will not come back to court.

"You will go directly to prison."

Greene committed the offences on August 6 last year.

As part of his sentence he has also been banned from the roads for 20 months and told that he must re-sit the extended driving test.