Bradford drivers who think it doesn’t matter if they break the law as long as they don’t get caught will go to jail, a judge warned today.

“When the blue lights come on, you stop or you go to prison,” Judge Jonathan Rose told a motorcyclist who ran five red lights in a high speed chase across the city.

Ayden Howard, 24, of Lund Street, Fairweather Green, Bradford, pleaded guilty to driving dangerously on a Kawasaki ZX while untaxed, unlicensed and uninsured.

He was locked up for eight months and banned from driving for 22 months. Judge Rose made a deprivation order on the bike that the court heard Howard had built himself from spare parts.

Jailing him, Judge Rose said: “Yet another person in this city who thinks they can disobey the law with impunity and it doesn’t matter as long as you’re not caught.”

The court heard that Howard was spotted by the police speeding on Bradford Road shortly before 10pm on May 1.

When the officers activated their blue lights and sirens, he looked over his shoulder and decided to ‘do one.’ He sped off down Swain House Road, Canal Road and Kings Road, reaching 90mph in a 40 zone and 70 in a 30 zone.

He jumped five red lights, narrowly avoided members of the public and undertook and overtook other road users.

He was stopped by a stinger device and told police he panicked and decided to ‘do one.’ The court heard he had no previous convictions.

Howard’s barrister, Laura McBride, said he had lost his apprenticeship when the firm went into liquidation and fallen in with the wrong crowd. He no longer took drugs and he didn’t drink any alcohol.

His partner was expecting their first child but he didn’t know that at the time.

“It was stupid and it was reckless. He shouldn’t have been driving in the first place and he panicked,” Miss McBride said.

She asked the court if the custodial sentence could be suspended to allow Howard to be there when the baby was born.

Judge Rose said Howard had lost his job through no fault of his own but had then taken the route that had led him to court. He had associated with people who were a malign influence and taken drugs.

He had built the bike himself and was riding it on the road untaxed and with no licence or insurance.

It was a persistent course of aggressive bad driving that put the police and other road users at risk.