A BANNED driver who smashed into three cars during a 70 mph police chase through a York housing estate has been jailed for 18 months.

Sean Morris, prosecuting, said Luke Watson, 22, tried to evade police by pulling into a side street in the early hours of July 27, 2003, and turning off his lights. When police followed, he set off through the Beckfield Lane estate without headlights.

Smashing the area's predominant speed limit of 30mph, he crashed into three cars, causing damage which cost at least £2,000 to repair, and narrowly missed a lamppost before abandoning the vehicle he was driving and fleeing on foot. Police later found him hiding in a nearby garden.

Watson, of Mowbray Drive, Acomb, York, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving in Boroughbridge Road, Cranbrook Road, Danebury Drive, Viking Road, Jute Road and Mowbray Drive, driving while disqualified and without insurance.

He was jailed for 18 months, on top of a 12-month sentence imposed by York magistrates last month for other motoring offences, and banned from driving for three years. He was also ordered to take an extended driving test before driving alone again.

Nicholas Barker, defending, said Watson did not agree that he had reached 70 mph.

Three weeks before the car chase, magistrates had given him a community rehabilitation order. He had known he was banned from driving when police had spotted him driving , so he had panicked and tried to escape from them.

He had had a difficult upbringing as a child in local authority care, but had attempted to make a family life as an adult with his parents.

His father was now terminally ill with cancer.

Updated: 11:51 Saturday, July 24, 2004