Caught on video: Father with three children in car crashes in 102mph police chase

These pictures show the dramatic scenes unfold as Jason Thomas raced through roads at deadly speeds.

He weaved in and out of traffic and travelled along the hard shoulder hurtling through a red light before smashing into another car.

The video footage, taken from the police car chasing him, then shows him making a half-hearted attempt to run off, abandoning his three children in the back seat. His partner was also in the car at the time.

Police said that 33-year-old Thomas, of Dudley, had put hundreds of lives at risk with his shocking driving.

He had just picked his children up from school at 3.30pm on September 30 last year in his silver Vauxhall Vectra when he was pursued by traffic cops who suspected him of carrying drugs. Police today released dramatic footage of the chase, after a judge jailed him.

After the chase – which lasted up to 10 minutes – Thomas, of Blowers Green Road, was arrested when officers wrestled him to the ground as he made a feeble attempt to run off across a dual carriageway.

He was jailed for 22 months after he admitted dangerous driving at Worcester Crown Court yesterday. Sentencing him, Judge Michael Cullum said: "The high speed while undertaking on the hard shoulder is shocking. All the while, you were putting at risk of serious injury or worse, hundreds of people. In some ways, the most shocking thing about the whole episode was when, having crashed, the rear door of your vehicle opened and out stretched the arm of your young child.

"What sort of person drives like that with their own three children and their partner in that vehicle? You didn't wait to see how the people in the other vehicle were. You even ran away from your own family."

Police had flashed their lights at Thomas and indicated for him to stop after they suspected he had drugs in his car.

The two-minute recording shows the Vectra tearing up the M5 near Worcester even attempting to run the police car off the road.

Thomas is seen leaving the motorway at junction 4 before hurtling along country lanes on the A491 near Hagley.

But just a few seconds later the footage shows Thomas hitting a Toyota, carrying a man with his 80-year-old mother – who was hurt in the crash.

The court heard it was Thomas's sixth conviction for dangerous driving, and that he was already driving whilst disqualified and without insurance.

He also had 11 previous convictions for driving while disqualified. Thomas was jailed for 18 months for dangerous driving and four months consecutively for driving while disqualified. He was also disqualified from driving for 10 years.