Others include having passengers in a vehicle including children, causing serious injury to one or more victims in addition to the death, placing the blame wrongly on others and failing to stop or hindering attempts to assist at the scene of the accident.
Being a heavy goods driver, driving for commercial purposes or having a poorly maintained vehicle will also be treated as “aggravating” factors meriting longer sentences.
The Government increased the maximum jail terms for dangerous driving after complaints from victims’ families at “lenient” decisions. One of the most high profile cases involved Claire Hitier-Abadie, 36, a mother of two children who was killed when lorry driver Alan Warwick collided with her as she cycled at a busy junction in London.
Warwick was preoccupied with tidying his cab and failed to indicate left when his lorry crushed her to death. He escaped jail, and was instead sentenced to 160 hours unpaid work and banned from driving for 12 months.
There was a similar outcry after a professional driver, Raymond Treharne, 73, received only a nine-month suspended sentence after killing father of two, David Jones, 41 when he hit him on his bike from behind.
Judges are guided to impose sentences of between eight and 18 years for the worst cases of dangerous driving, though they can impose higher jail terms.
There are 10 criteria that define the “worst” cases include deliberately ignoring the rules of the road and disregarding the risk to others, carrying out a “highly dangerous” manoeuvre, prolonged use of a mobile phone, racing another driver and speed “significantly in excess” of the speed limit.