A LORRY driver who caused a horrific eight car pile up on the M53 on the Wirral, leaving one driver dead and another with life-changing injuries, was jailed for two and a half years on Monday.

Father-of-three Mark Done, aged 51, was crushed to death in his Citreon car after the Volvo articulated wagon driven by Peter Tootle ploughed into it while it was in a queue of stationery traffic following an earlier crash.

The driver of the car immediately in front, Paul Johnson, spent two months in hospital with catastrophic head, chest and back injuries and is still receiving treatment 14 months later after the crash on the southbound motorway near the junction 4 turn-off for Bebington. Some occupants in other six cars which were also shunted forward were also injured.

Tootle, 61, of Naomi Close, Blacon, Chester, pleaded guilty today to two charges involving causing death and causing serious injury by dangerous driving on the morning of September 30 last year.

Chilling footage from the dashboard camera in the lorry was played to the court showing Tootle travelling at 52 mph and ploughing into the queue without braking or taking avoiding action and despite Matrix signs advising 40 mph.

Jailing Tootle, who stood agitatedly wringing his hands, Judge Andrew Menary, QC, said that the video footage was “truly shocking” and Tootle has given no explanation for being distracted and not seeing the queue which was visible for 400 metres, giving him 14 seconds in which to react.

“The evidence is clear - you did not make any effort at all to slow down or to brake or alter the direction of your travel, despite the fact the queue of traffic was visible for some 400 metres.

“It would have taken 14 seconds to travel, a significant and sufficient time and distance in which to appreciate the position of the traffic ahead and take again action. You must have been avoidably distracted for a substantial length of time.

“It is not clear what you were doing and why you failed to stop before the collision. have no doubt the families of those killed or injured in this tragic event will be wondering what you were doing.

“There is no evidence you were using a mobile phone or affected by fatigue, but you were not keeping a proper look-out, that much is clear, and the results were truly awful.

“You disregarded road signs designed to alert you to a potential hazard ahead.”

He banned him from driving for six years three months.

Kim Egerton, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court that Mr Done, a coach driver from Kirkby, was on a day off taking his wife Diane Done out for lunch at Llandudno, where the couple met 32 years earlier, when the tragedy occurred on a fine and sunny day.

Mrs Done spotted the lorry approaching them at speed in her wing mirror and told her husband, “This lorry is coming up too fast”.

Miss Egerton said: “Her next recollection is in someone else’s car asking for her husband.”

She suffered two broken vertebrae and slipped discs and is still undergoing treatment for her back injuries.

Miss Egerton said that the driver in front, Paul Johnson, remembered nothing of the crash and woke up in hospital several weeks later and was an in-patient for eight weeks.

He was left with bleeding on the brain, shattered ribs, punctured lungs, a smashed arm and the base of his spine was fractured.

Other drivers and passengers were injured and there were fears that cars might explode and fire extinguishers were grabbed from vehicles including Tootle’s.

Tootle said he had moved from the first to the second lane to allow another lorry to join the motorway. He claimed he was waiting to be flashed to be let back in but made the manoeuvre anyway and crashed into Mr Done’s Citreon.

The dashboard footage showed his lorry ploughing into Mr Done’s car and shunting it forward and he then went back into the second lane and travelled some distance before stopping.

Tootle, who sat rocking back and forth in the dock during the entire hearing, was agitated at the scene, holding his head in his hands and he told witnesses he was to blame.

Moving impact statements from relatives of Mr Done, who was also a pilot, were read to the court including one from his daughter Sophie and his sister. His daughter described him as the “best dad” and told how she had been “a daddy’s girl” whose life is now changed forever.

Harpreet Sandhu, defending, said that Tootle had been a professional driver for 34 years but has not driven since the tragedy. He will face difficulties in prison but accepted they “paled into insignificance” compared to the victims’ families.

After the hearing members of Mr Done’s family, who wept during the case, were heard angrily saying that the sentence was not long enough.