A MOTORIST told a jury today he saw the car Max Lewis was a passenger in smash into the front of a van as he looked in his rear view mirror.

Robin Cowdery said the orange Citroen Saxo had just gone past him out of control when it hit the vehicle on Forest Road in Lacock.

And seconds before the fatal impact he saw three cars had all whizzed past so fast he swore out loud because he thought they were racing, he said.

The former serviceman, who now works as an HGV driver, was giving evidence at the trial of Julian Drew, Connor Forester and Daniel Palmer, who deny causing death by dangerous driving.

Mr Cowdery said he was in his Vauxhall Zafira with his disabled wife Michelle, their two-year-old grandson and her brother on the afternoon of Saturday, November 15.

They were heading towards Lacock behind a horse transporter when he said the three vehicles came the other way.

He said the first car, a Nissan Primera driven by 26-year-old Drew, 'hammered past' causing him to move slightly to the left in the road.

The second car, also a Saxo driven by Forrester, 19, then went past 'even faster', he said before he saw the third car, driven by Palmer, 23, go on to the grass verge.

"By this time, as I was coming in to the brow of the bend, that is when the orange Saxo hit the bank," he said.

"I saw him going on to the verge and spin off in to the oncoming path of the van behind me.

"I did see the impact in my rear view mirror, yes.

"It caught the van in the driver's side of the front and then spun out on to the bank."

He said that, after pulling over he rushed to help, putting his military experience to use, and quickly found 19-year-old Max had died.

Mr Cowdery told the jury of eight men and four women: "In my eyes they were racing, going too fast for the type of road and the conditions. It was overcast but not so overcast you needed lights on.

"As they came past their engines were screaming: all three. I drive with my window down. I could hear the tone of the engines.

"The first was fast, the second even faster and the third one, it speaks for itself. It was going really fast as if it was trying to catch up: hell for leather."

Tristan Harwood, for Drew, put to him that he may have been mistaken about the speed his client, in the first car, was going to which he replied, "They were going a lot faster that I was going".

Mark Sharman, for Forester, asked how close the first two cars were to each other, to which he replied "not bumper to bumper".

Robert Morgan-Jones, for Palmer, asked if he could see the front of the horsebox and how far out into the road it was, and he said he could not.

He also suggested his client was going between 30mph and 35mph.

Mr Cowdery replied: "He was going so fast it bounced off the bank in to the path of the oncoming vehicle because it was out of control."

Drew, of Littlejohn Avenue, Forester, Melksham, of Meadow Road, and Palmer, of Bowmans Court, Melksham, deny death by dangerous driving.

Drew and Forester also deny alternative counts of dangerous driving. Palmer admits death by careless driving.

The case continues.