A DRINK-DRIVER who crashed into an Amazon delivery man’s van and left him with life-changing injuries has been jailed.

Stanislaw Garbarczyk, 38, was nearly double the drink-drive limit on the A361, near Filkins, West Oxfordshire, at 7.30pm on November 22 when he swung into the wrong lane to overtake other cars.

While driving around a left-hand bend in the dark, he crashed head-on into the van of Brazilian Leonardo Firmin who was desperately attempting to swerve out of the way.

Sentencing Garbarczyk, of Shelley Street, Swindon, to a total of 35 months in prison at Oxford Crown Court on Monday, Judge Ian Pringle said both men were lucky to be alive after the horror crash.

Mr Firmin, who was 36 at the time, was left with a long list of serious injuries including a broken pelvis, dislocated hip, lacerated spleen and fractured ribs and two fractures to his right leg.

He was in hospital for a month and is still unable to work in his job as a courier driver, preventing him from sending money back to his daughter in Brazil.

Garbarczyk, a mechanic, was taken to hospital and then later arrested and found to have 158mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood, over the 85mg limit.

The car he was driving had no insurance, no valid text certificate, was displaying false number plates and both the back tyres had dangerously low tread.

The court heard how he had a long list of similar offences and was disqualified from driving and on a suspended sentence at the time.

Mr Pringle said: “Why you drove that day, no one knows. You had been drinking alcohol all afternoon with your friends and for some reason you decided to get in a car and drive that evening.

“It is difficult to think of a more serious case of driving when someone is disqualified.”

Garbarczyk’s defence barrister Gordana Austin said that her client, who has been in the UK since 2004, feared he would be separated from his family and deported back to Poland once he gets out of jail.

She said he thinks about the crash every day and feels guilt and remorse for what he did.

She added that he had complained of feeling lonely and isolated in custody because there are ‘not many people who speak Polish.’