Caroline Meeking, from lllminster in Somerset, who is accused of killing her husband by pulling their car's handbrake at 60mph, told the jury in the ongoing manslaughter trial that he had called her "a satnav with no batteries."

Meeking, who denied the manslaughter charge, sobbed incessantly in the witness box as she told jurors she had argued with husband Alan when he took a wrong turn.

Apparently, the car's wheels locked when the handbrake was pulled and the car skidded across the road for nearly 20m before colliding with a rover and Alan was killed instantly, Daily Mail reports.

Meeking spoke in her defence saying that her husband had verbally abused her and she feared for her own safety: "He started talking about my family and my dad. He started abusing me and saying that they are scum."

"I kept saying 'Just stop it, just stop it. Just stop the car, I want to get out. I don't want to listen to you anymore.' I was pretty nervous. I just wanted to get out. I just thought if he drove off I could walk home from there or he could turn around and get me once he had calmed down," she said.

Breaking down in the courtroom, she said: "It seemed like he was going more faster. He had never shouted at me in the car like that before. I had never seen him that way before or in that manner in such a confined space for that length of time."

She added that her concerns about her safety and her husband's weird behavior that night triggered her to pull the handbrake. "I thought to myself if I opened the door and jumped out but I thought he was going faster and I couldn't jump out. And I thought if I put the handbrake on it would slow the car down and I could get out. He could then go off and do whatever he wanted to do," she said.

She even showed the jury how she had pulled the handbrake: "I just pulled it up like when you park a car."

Meeking asserted that when she had reached for the handbrake she didn't intend to hurt herself or her husband, and didn't ever think that the car would spin out of control.
"I just wanted to defuse the situation," she said.

The jury was told that passing motorists found her weeping over his body, screaming: "I'm so sorry, Alan, don't leave me."

The tragic incident happened at 10.22 pm on August 30 last year. The couple was driving home to Illminster along the A3088 highway after a day trip to Bridport, Dorset.

Later, it was revealed in the blood tests that Alan had 168mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood, which was twice over the legal limit.