A coroner has condemned the actions of two drivers involved in a death crash as they raced each other home from work.

Warehouseman Thomas Ainley, 21, was killed in his Citroen Saxo after he overtook his friend Richard Newman's Vauxhall Corsa which was also overtaking a Mercedes.

Mr Ainley's car clipped the Corsa before spinning into a wall and splitting a telegraph pole in two in Oxford Road, Gomersal.

The tragedy occurred on August 6 last year when both men were driving home at 10pm from work at the Next warehouse in East Bierley, Bradford.

Witnesses told the inquest in Huddersfield yesterday the cars were travelling at speeds of up to 80mph in a 30mph limit.

Recording his verdict, Coroner Roger Whittaker said: "Both of them (the cars) in my view were driven in a dangerous manner, and as a result of the foolishness of these drivers, Thomas Richard Ainley is now dead.

"This is a case where the conclusion of accidental death hardly covers the situation but it's all I'm left with in these circumstances."

Pathologist Dr Andrew Jackson said Mr Ainley, of Forge Lane, Liversedge, would have died instantly from multiple traumatic injuries.

Laura Walters, who worked with Mr Ainley and Mr Newman, had been dropped off in Birkenshaw by Mr Ainley minutes before the accident. She said she had been concerned about the speed of his driving.

Stephen Ackroyd saw the cars speed past his shop, Gomersal Grocers, in Oxford Road at between 60 and 70mph. He said: "They looked as though they were racing to me."

The driver of the Mercedes, Mohammed Azam, said two cars passed him, one behind the other, "at well over 80mph - like a bullet", before one struck the other sending the Saxo into a spin.

The inquest was told Mr Newman was interviewed by police at the crash scene, and in a statement read to the hearing, he said: "We don't always keep to the speed limit. As we were coming down, there was a car in front of me travelling in the same direction. I had to slow down. Thomas was still coming up pretty quick behind me - I expected him to slow down.

"He wasn't signalling so I didn't think he was going to go past me. I accelerated to go past the person in front of me. As I pulled out, Thomas also pulled out. He began to overtake me as well. I was at the side of this guy and Thomas was coming up at the side of me. I can't remember who hit the brakes - either me or Thomas. Next thing I know, Thomas had taken my offside mirror off and spun in the road ahead of me."

In a second police interview on September 30, 2002, he denied they had been racing but Mr Whittaker said he disputed that.

After the hearing, road safety group BRAKE said that drivers under the age of 25 made up only ten per cent of the driving population yet accounted for 25 per cent of all road deaths.

Its spokesman Ben Heathley said it was supporting the Criminal Justice Bill which is going through the House of Lords aimed at increasing the sentence for those who caused death by dangerous driving from ten years imprisonment to 14 years.

"It's a fact that particularly young men are prone to speeding," he said.