Exeter Court Reporter Ted Davenport writes for the Herald.

A holidaymaker who caused a crash that left five people seriously injured has been banned from driving and given a suspended jail sentence.

Norman Chai was trying to overtake a lorry on a 50 mph stretch of the A 30 near Upottery in the Blackdown Hills when he lost control in ‘terrible’ conditions and hit an oncoming car, forcing it into a third vehicle.

His wife Susan, her elderly and frail mother Molly Kinnear, and two passengers in the other cars suffered multiple fractures and Chai himself had to be put into an induced coma with serious internal injuries.

His mother-in-law, who was in her 90s, later died of unrelated causes.

Two other adults and a baby in a child seat suffered less serious injuries and the main road was closed for hours as police cleared up and investigated the crash at the Stockland Lane junction on the afternoon of November 26, 2022.

The accident was filmed by cameras on the front and back of the lorry which Chai was overtaking. They showed his orange Vauxhall Crossland trying to pull in to avoid a traffic island but skidding across the road and hitting a Mitsubishi.

The lorry itself was going at the speed limit and Exeter Crown Court was told that Chai had mistaken filter lanes at the junction for the start of a stretch of dual carriageway.

Chai, aged 66, of Midhope, Woking, admitted causing serious injury by dangerous driving and was jailed for two years, suspended for two years, banned from driving for three years, curfewed for three months and fined £2,000 by Recorder Mr James Bromige.

He told him: “This was not a deliberate decision to ignore the rules of the road but you failed to recognise what was in front of you and drove at a speed which was wholly inappropriate for the conditions, which can be described as terrible.”

Miss Beth Rickerby, prosecuting, played the footage from the HGV of the accident that happened around 2.30 pm on Saturday November 26, 2022 in heavy rain and on a road which was wet with spray and had poor visibility.

She said Chai himself, his wife and his mother-in-law were all seriously injured and that the driver of the Mitsubishi and the passenger in the third car suffered broken legs. There were two children in one of the other cars, one of whom was bruised by the child seat restraints.

Miss Lisa Denley, defending, said Chai was taking his wife and mother-in-law on a short holiday in Cornwall and had driven from Surrey on the A303, which has frequent stretches of single lane road interspersed with dual carriageway.

She said he made the mistake of thinking he had reached one and it was safe to pass and was left with no option but to carry on with the overtake by the time he saw the traffic island.

He has a clean driving licence, is totally remorseful about what he did, and has references from friends and family which portray his as kind, considerate and always willing to help others.