COURT CASE: THE parents of 15-year-old car crash victim Charlotte Parsons are to campaign for a change in the law after the driver was fined £500 and banned for a year.

Charlotte, of Tiddlywink, Yatton Keynell, died on May 17 when a Vauxhall Astra she was travelling in careered into a field and overturned after it was involved in a head-on collision.

The accident happened shortly before 7pm on the B4039 between Yatton Keynell and Chippenham, a quarter of a mile from her home.

Nicholas Wilkerson, 18, of Elizabeth Place, Pewsham, appeared before North Wiltshire magistrates in Chippenham on Monday and pleaded guilty to careless driving.

One witness told the court she thought the Astra was travelling at about 70mph. Another said she had never seen a car moving so fast on that stretch of road.

Wilkerson, who was 17 at the time of the crash, was fined £500, banned from driving for a year and ordered to retake his driving test. He was also told to pay £55 costs.

Charlotte's family let out sighs of relief when the driving ban was announced but her father Julian, 35, a station officer at Chippenham fire station, said the law must be changed. "The magistrates got it right under the powers they had to sentence him with, but there is a gap in the law at the moment," he said.

"There should be a charge somewhere along the lines of causing death by careless driving or causing death by driving without due care and attention.

"At the moment it seems that sentencing is too light for the severity of the crime, there needs to be some sort of charge that covers greater sentencing powers for the courts."

Mr Parsons said the law should be changed to prevent teenagers from being allowed to drive until they are 19 and a restriction should be imposed preventing newly-qualified drivers from taking passengers for a period of time after their test.

Mr Parsons, who said he and his wife Francesca will be adding their voices to a number of pressure groups campaigning for a change in the driving law, said: "We have a life sentence of missing our daughter, and it gets worse every day."

Mrs Parson, 36, who works at Sainsbury's Homebase in Chippenham, said said she and her husband undergo counselling each week.

She said the family was going to find it difficult to face Christmas without their daughter.

"I am dreading Christmas, Charlotte so loved this time of year," she said.

"Everybody wants us for Christmas but we have to be at home in the morning because that's where Charlotte would be and we will be able to go and see her down at the church."

Mrs Parsons said Charlotte's room has remained untouched, even down to a cup and saucer that she left beside her bed.

"She also wrote a note on the board in the kitchen before she went out, asking for ingredients because she was cooking," she said. "It says, thanx, with a kiss, and we have varnished it, so it does not come off."

She said she had become more protective of Charlotte's only brother, Callum, 12, a pupil at Sheldon School.

"It is very hard to let him go out," said Mrs Parsons. "Callum loves being at home and sometimes he has tried to stay at friend's and has called us to pick him up saying he had to come home."

Road Peace, a charity supporting traffic victims, is campaigning for the charge of manslaughter to be reintroduced in cases where drivers plead guilty to collisions in which people died.

Chairman Zoe Stow said she agreed with Mr Parsons the careless driving charge was inadequate.

"The punishment is very slight compared to the scale of what happened here," she said