A BANNED driver has been jailed for causing horrific injuries to three members of the same family in a high speed head-on crash.

A court heard John Cove, aged 31, of Heritage Mews, Charmouth, was driving his BMW so fast before the collision that other motorists feared he was going to kill someone.

He lost control on a bend, veered onto the wrong side of the road, and crashed into a family travelling home from Dorchester to Exeter.

Cove left the driver and one passenger in intensive care, a six-year-old girl needing emergency treatment at a children's hospital, and two others with less serious injuries.

Cove, who was serving two different driving bans, claimed someone else had been driving. But forensic tests showed he was alone in the car.

His hit a Renault Megane in which driver Anna Szkutnik, 39, was taking her daughter Olivia, six, her partner Pavel, and her cousins Izabella and Ursula back from meeting her son in Dorchester.

Anna Szkutnik was about to qualify as an osteopath but suffered such serious injuries she was forced to put her life on hold. All the occupants suffered major psychological trauma.

Cove has a driving record dating back to when he was banned as a teenager.

A court heard he had been banned from driving the month before the crash but had ignored the disqualification and been banned again shortly after for driving while disqualified and having no insurance.

He also had no insurance on the night of the crash on the A35 west of Axminster, Devon, in November 2016.

Cove admitted three counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving and was jailed for three years and nine months and banned from driving for seven-and-a-half years by Judge Erik Salomonsen at Exeter Crown Court.

He told the defendant: "You knew this road and perhaps because familiarity breeds contempt, or because of your own arrogant view of your driving ability, you drove recklessly and caused grievous consequences.

"This was a prolonged course of bad driving. Your speed was wholly inappropriate.

"You should not have been driving at all. You were in flagrant breach of the disqualification and displayed a wholly selfish attitude to others, as you have done in your past life."

It was heard that other motorists came forward to describe being overtaken by Cove before the crash. One described his driving as 'madness'. His speed was estimated by one driver at 80mph.

Joss Ticehurst, defending, said Cove stayed out of trouble for eight years when he was in work but his life had spiralled out of control after splitting with his partner.