Samantha Lorraine Halsey knew she shouldn't have been driving on August 16 last year.
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Police had warned her during an earlier encounter at Warrawong Bunnings not to get behind the wheel of her Holden Commodore sedan owing to her suspended licence.
But she did not want to leave her vehicle in the car park, and, unable to find someone to pick it up, opted to drive it herself.
However the short trip ended in turmoil just metres from her Lee Street home when she knocked down an elderly pedestrian crossing the road, leaving him with serious injuries.
The 77-year-old man and a friend had just left his home, also in Lee Street, when Halsey's Commodore struck him, flinging him onto the bonnet and into the car's windscreen.
Halsey swerved to avoid a parked car, sending the victim sprawling onto the roadway. Witnesses quickly came to the man's aid.
Halsey stopped briefly and got out of the car, but then got back in and drove off, prompting neighbours to take down her registration plate. The victim was treated in Wollongong Hospital for a broken ankle, broken pelvis and frozen kneecap.
Halsey handed herself into police a week later, where she admitted to driving the car but attempted to blame the crash on mechanical problems.
However that theory was soon debunked and Halsey conceded that it had been her negligence behind the wheel that had caused the collision.
In the NSW District Court on Monday, Halsey said she had suffered severe social anxiety since childhood, and fled the accident scene out of fear when witnesses began arriving.
"I wasn't scared of what had happened [the accident], I was scared of the people coming out of the houses," she said.
Halsey, who was jailed for six months in the Local Court earlier this month, begged Judge Paul Conlon to suspend the rest of her prison term, saying her prison experience so far had been terrible.
"I was bashed on my second night here; I didn't fight back but I had my finger broken," she said via video link from the prison.
"The girls here are very aggressive and loud - I'm being stood over for food, for anything."
Halsey also said being in the confined space of a prison cell brought up post-traumatic stress issues relating to her abusive childhood, in which she was repeatedly locked in her bedroom and not allowed out, even to use the toilet.
Judge Conlon accepted Halsey's mental and physical health had been affected by her time behind bars but refused to suspend the sentence, noting her traffic record was poor, and the victim's injuries had been substantial. However he agreed to reduce her sentence by two months, meaning she will be released on parole in September.