A CAR driven by a rock musician ploughed into a family cycling to a campsite at Hanley Swan after a birthday party.

Carolyn Oliver and her 14-year-old daughter Sophie were knocked from their bikes on the B4209 by Patrick Cook's Citroen, Worcester Crown Court heard.

Husband Paul saw his wife lying on the road in a pool of blood but both victims miraculously escaped with minor injuries.

Cook, of Bristol, had been playing guitar with the Worried Men rock band at The Lamb pub in Malvern on the night of the accident. But prosecutor Susan Cliff said he failed to stop at the crash scene, abandoned his car in Hanley Castle - and then lied to police that it had been stolen.

The 39-year-old was convicted of careless driving but cleared of dangerous driving. He pleaded guilty to failing to stop, failing to report an accident and perverting the course of justice.

Judge Alistair McCreath passed a three-month jail term, suspended for 12 months, imposed a year-long driving ban and ordered Cook to carry out 250 hours unpaid community work after he heard evidence that if Cook was jailed, two members of the three-piece professional band would suffer financial hardship.

The Oliver family, from Stanbridge in Bedfordshire, had been to a party in Welland on September 10 last year. They were cycling along Hanley Road when the crash happened at 2am. Defence counsel Bernard O'Brien said Cook had only drunk two pints of shandy that night.