A driving instructor’s heartfelt plea to spare her son jail after he led the police on an 18 minute “blue light” chase at up to 80mph, failed at Bradford Crown Court.

Karam Ramzan did not tell his parents he was to be sentenced for dangerous driving until four days before the hearing because he did not want to burden them with the devastating news, his barrister Elyas Patel said.

Ramzan, 24, of Emm Lane, Manningham, Bradford, was convicted after lying on oath to a jury that he was an innocent passenger in the vehicle. He pleaded guilty to driving without insurance.

On Monday, his mother pleaded for her law graduate son to be spared an immediate prison sentence.

“For my son to commit something like this is appalling,” she conceded.

But she told Judge Neil Davey QC that he helped to care for his five siblings after his parents divorced.

“He’s just a good kid gone wrong; maybe hanging round the wrong crowd,” she said.

But Judge Davey jailed Ramzan for four months and banned him from driving for 14 months.

“People must understand that when the police put on their blue lights and their sirens, you stop,” he said.

During the trial, the jury heard that Ramzan sped off in a silver VW Golf at 3am on April 16.

He was pursued from Eldwick to Duckworth Lane, Bradford, accelerating through villages at 75mph.

He drove on the wrong side of the road, jumped red lights and went the wrong way round a roundabout, prosecutor Jessica Randell said.

Ramzan then jumped out of the vehicle while it was moving and ran off. The car hit a tree with his two friends still on board, the court heard.

He remained silent during his police interview and took the case to trial.

Mr Patel said: “There stands before the court an absolutely petrified young man. He knows full well he is staring prison in the face.”

Ramzan had never been in any trouble before and was very unlikely to trouble the courts ever again.

“At least he manned up to the probation officer and admitted that he was the driver,” Mr Patel said.

He fled from the police in “stupid and mindless panic.”

Mr Patel conceded that the courts in Bradford sent out the message that those who failed to stop for the police, and then drove dangerously, went to prison.

But he urged the judge to take an exceptional course and suspend the sentence.

“The driving was obviously dangerous, mad and idiotic, but no one was put at risk,” Mr Patel said.

There was little or no traffic at that time of the morning and no pedestrians.

But Judge Davey said Ramzan “disobeyed pretty well every rule on the road.”

He endangered others, including his friends, abandoning them to their fate when the car was still moving.