A MIX of drugs, extreme speed, and broken bones has landed a Rocherlea man in jail for up to two years.
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Adam Roy Triffett, 28, was high on speed or ice when he crashed his car at 160km/h on the East Tamar Highway at Hillwood in 2012.
Before his 1994 VR Commodore with bald tyres succumbed to the sweeping left bend and flew off the road, Triffett has been travelling at 200km/h along the highway.
Justice Robert Pearce found he'd driven at 180km/h, three times the speed limit, in built-up areas of Lilydale Road in an apparent rush to score morphine at George Town.
At one point passenger Lisa Maree Butler told Triffett he better not kill her and asked him to slow down.
Astonishingly she did not require surgery despite the crash leaving her with spinal fractures, a broken shoulder joint, six cracked ribs and a collapsed lung.
Her partner Ricky Brown was flung from the car and thought everyone was dead.
Another passenger Mark Freeman suffered a broken femur and a large scalp laceration.
He underwent surgery for a hip screw and spent a month in a wheelchair. The court heard he'd been left permanently incapacitated as he cannot run.
Triffett was not seriously hurt.
Before the crash Triffett travelled at high speed for 20 kilometres from Rocherlea.
He passed motorists who told police they had expected to eventually come across the car in a ditch.
Tasmania Police Northern Crash Investigation Service discovered a 130-metre skid mark where Triffett first lost control of the vehicle to where he left the road.
Once he left the road he travelled another 60m, rolling until the car came to a stop on its side.
"Miss Butler later described it as like being in a washing machine," Justice Pearce said in the Launceston Supreme Court yesterday.
"The damage to the car and marks on trees near the vehicle's path demonstrate the forces to which it was subject."
Justice Pearce said some mitigation arose from Triffett's pleas of guilty to two counts of causing grievous bodily harm by dangerous driving "although it cannot be said that there (was) much chance of acquittal".
"Death and injury from dangerous driving is now widely recognised by the community as a serious social and financial problem," he said
Between July 2011 and October 2012, Triffett received five speeding fines.
Justice Pearce set a one-year non-parole period.