A SUPERCAR salesman has been handed a jail term after fitting a device to his company car to bypass speed camera vans in North Yorkshire.

Nicholas Burke, 46 of York, was driving along Greengales Lane, near the city, last February when he passed a speed camera van in excess of the 60mph speed limit.

The speed camera failed to take a reading, but a code was instead activated, which told the police that Burke was using a 'laser jamming' device.

The court heard how Burke had installed the 'Laser Elite' laser jammer to his company-provided BMW 335D to evade speeding fines. 

Burke, who worked as a salesman at the Ferrari dealership in Leeds, resigned from his job in the months following the incident.

On Thursday, April 4, at York Crown Court, Burke was handed a two-month jail term for perverting the course of justice.

North Yorkshire Police traffic constable Andy Forth said: "As Burke's prison sentence shows, the courts take a very dim view of people who use jammer devices to pervert the course of justice.

"As such, we have a duty to investigate when we think someone has used one illegally and we will uphold the law.

"So if you use one of these devices in North Yorkshire there's a very strong chance you'll be caught.

"The purpose of our enforcement fleet is to reduce road casualties.

"Therefore to use such devices to interfere with speed enforcement - one of the main four causes of fatal and serious-injury collisions - increases the risk to everyone else who uses the county's roads, and the communities they represent."