What happens when a wealthy estate agent crashes his six-figure electric car on a motorway—and then disappears for two days?
That’s exactly the question police and the courts had to deal with after 46-year-old Scott Morgan, a well-off businessman from Hale, Greater Manchester, abandoned his BMW i7 M Sport on the M56 near Chester and vanished without reporting the incident.
Crashing a £100K BMW and Vanishing into Thin Air
It was a Friday evening around 8:30 p.m. when Morgan lost control of his £100,000 luxury electric vehicle and ploughed into a crash barrier.
The crash triggered the car’s automatic SOS system, which alerted emergency services.
But by the time they arrived, the car had been abandoned on the hard shoulder, with debris strewn across the motorway and the vehicle sticking out into one of the lanes.
With the airbags deployed and no driver in sight, a helicopter was scrambled, fearing someone may have been seriously injured and wandering nearby.
A Gated Mansion, a Switched-Off Phone, and No Driver
Police traced the car to Morgan’s £1.4 million gated property, but when they arrived, the house was in darkness and his phone was off.
For two days, there was no word from the driver—until Morgan eventually turned up at a police station, claiming he had assumed police had been alerted by the BMW’s SOS system and had left the scene because no officers had shown up.
Morgan’s Story: “I Thought the Police Would Come”
According to Morgan, after the crash he regained consciousness, called his wife to pick him up, and then went to a relative’s house instead of a hospital because of his dislike for medical settings.
He also claimed to have asked his personal assistant to arrange for the car to be recovered.
He insisted he hadn’t been drinking that night and didn’t think he needed to report the crash, since no other vehicles were involved.
Still, if police had found him at the scene, they said he would have definitely been breathalysed—especially given his history.
A History of Bad Driving Decisions
This wasn’t Morgan’s first run-in with traffic law.
He had two prior drink-related offences: one for drink-driving in 2005 and another in 2018 for failing to provide a breath sample.
Add to that nine points on his licence for various speeding offences, and it’s clear this wasn’t just a one-off moment of forgetfulness.
Courtroom Drama and a Dodged Jail Sentence
When the case reached Chester Magistrates’ Court, Morgan pleaded guilty to failing to report an accident.
Another charge—leaving the vehicle in a dangerous position—was dropped.
He narrowly avoided a jail sentence, receiving instead a 12-month community order with 200 hours of unpaid work, a £199 fine, and a six-month driving ban.
The magistrate, JP Olga Randall, didn’t hold back, describing the incident as a “very, very serious offence.”
“Naive, Not Malicious”: The Defence’s Plea
Morgan’s lawyer, Marc McCormick, argued his client didn’t mean to cause harm and had simply been “naive.”
He stressed that Morgan misunderstood his legal duty to report the crash and genuinely believed the car’s SOS system had handled it.
The lawyer added that Morgan deeply regrets his actions and is determined not to appear before the court again.
Lessons Learned or Just Another Close Call?
In his own words, Morgan told a probation officer he had learned his lesson from his past mistakes and now always uses an Uber if he drinks.
He insisted that he had not consumed any alcohol on the night of the crash and blamed the chaos on a stressful week and a bad judgment call.
A Wake-Up Call for a High-Earner
With an annual income of £144,000 and a career in high-end property through his firm, Move Residentials, Morgan might have expected his wealth to offer protection.
Instead, his decisions left him publicly humiliated and legally penalized—just short of a jail sentence.