SPEEDING and dangerous motorists face a crackdown under Government proposals.

The Home Office is considering automatic three-year bans, or possibly bans for life, and minimum one-year jail terms for death by dangerous driving and drink-driving.

Ministers want to increase the maximum jail terms for dangerous driving and increase fines for speeding, with the possibility of imprisonment.

There could be unlimited fines for careless driving under proposals to be included in a Government White Paper in July.

About 3,400 lives are lost each year following road accidents, with more than 40,000 people injured, and ministers want to meet a ten-year target of cutting deaths by 40 per cent and halving child fatalities.

However, some campaigners say the measures do not go far enough.

Zoe Stow, chairwoman of RoadPeace, a charity campaigning on behalf of road traffic victims, said they were a "cosmetic exercise".

The organisation wants to see more police officers as well as more commitment from the courts.

Mrs Stow welcomed some of the measures, but said: "It is easy for the Government to give an impression of cracking down when, in reality, relatively few people are charged with offences and when people are, they get sentences often well below the maximum.

"There should be certainty of punishment to deter people with more police on the roads."

Harry Cape, of the Campaign Against Drink Drivers, based in the North-East, said: "They are certainly enough to be getting on with. There should be a life ban in cases of serious injury or death and for persistent offenders.

"It's about time the law caught up with the crime. Anything that is going to deter people is going to be a good thing."

On Tuesday, the parents of 17-year-old Belinda Blagg - killed last August in a crash in Barnard Castle, County Durham - criticised the sentence given to the driver who lost control of the car in which she was travelling.

Stanley and Linda Blagg, of Middlesbrough, criticised the £500 fine and one-year driving ban given to Lewis Hardy, 18, of Eggleston, Barnard Castle, for careless driving, and said they had hoped to see him jailed