A painter and decorator sparked a large ‘fracas’ on a street after colliding four times with a car.

Karamat Hussain was driving his Mitsubishi along Richmond Road in Accrington when the ‘ran into the back’ of a Ford Fiesta.

Burnley Crown Court heard how Hussain displayed a ‘startling’ level of poor driving when he collided with the car a further three times while trying to make off from the scene and the incident was captured on local CCTV.

When he returned to the road a short time later a large crowd of men had congregated and Hussain was ‘verbally aggressive’ and made threats in Punjabi to Kamran Nawaz, one of the passengers in the Ford Fiesta, the court was told.

Hussain, 61, of Malham Avenue, Accrington, pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention and using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

He was given eight points on his driving licence and fined £200.

Lucy Wright, prosecuting, told the court how the incident happened at around 2.45pm on August 3, 2013 and was started after a ‘relatively low velocity collision’.

Miss Wright said the further three collisions were not ‘deliberate acts’ but were Hussain’s ‘inability to control the vehicle’ and he ‘fell below the standard of a competent and careful driver’.

She told the court: “By the time the defendants vehicle returned to Richmond Road there was a number of other people present at the scene.

“Thereafter a disturbance took place between those who had been in the vehicle, Mr Hussain and others who had congregated.

CCTV showed a large number of males and the defendant running towards the complainant.

Mr Hussain was verbally aggressive, shouting and making threats in Punjabi.”

Miss Wright said there was a ‘background between the two parties’ from the same community and ‘they aren’t friends’.

Benjamin Knight, defending, said Hussain has had a clean driving licence for 40 years and ‘panicked’ after the first collision.

He said Hussain made a ‘poor decision getting out of the vehicle and chasing one of the group’.

Recorder Mark Laprell said: “This was a startling level of driving without due care and attention. A short time later a fracas developed.

"Two sides developed and there was a general fracas with shouting and abusive behaviour.”