The woman in her 20s appeared in the Bendigo Magistrates’ Court on Thursday charged with careless driving and exceeding the blood alcohol limit.

The crash occurred at 2.20pm but it was not a school day and there were few pedestrians on Edwards Road at the time.

Prosecutor Senior Constable Liz Jones said the woman veered to the left of the roadway and hit the back of a parked trailer.

There were no tyre marks leading up to the crash scene, which occurred in a 40 kilometres per hour zone.

Ambulance and police attended the scene and found an empty 700 millilitre bottle of vodka in the car, along with a receipt from Liquorland McIvor Road.

The receipt showed the bottle was purchased at 11.37am on the same day – three hours before the crash.

The woman recorded a blood-alcohol reading of 0.287, almost six times the legal limit.

She denied consuming alcohol that day and told officers her “left eye wasn’t working”.

Police noticed her eyes were “red and bloodshot”. 

The woman gave a “no comment” interview to police while her alcohol reading was sent away to be forensically analysed.

She was kept in hospital overnight for observation.

Defence counsel Garry Quinn said the woman did not remember much from the crash and it was the first time she had been before the court.

He said it was her day off from work, and she had been “functioning with a disease” for some time.

Mr Quinn said the crash was a “substantial wake up call” for his client.

“She’s intelligent enough to know that if she does it again – and if someone is killed – she’d be going to jail,” he said.

The woman has not driven since the crash.

Magistrate Bruce Cottrill said while not having the ability to drive again would be a major inconvenience for the woman’s professional work, he said she needed to be actively discouraged.

“It might be better if she doesn’t get relicenced,” he said.

The woman was fined $1000 without conviction and had her licence canceled for 28 months from August 22.