A driver who killed a pensioner when she lost control of her car and mounted a pavement has lost her High Court bid to reduce her sentence.

Pavitra Kancham, 31, had only passed her test a month before she pulled out of Granville Road, where she lives, and ploughed into 65-year-old Eric Wright.

Mr Wright was killed, and his wife injured.

Kancham admitted causing death by dangerous driving, and was jailed for 16 months at Isleworth Crown Court in August.

Appearing at the High Court today (Thursday), senior judges rejected a sentence challenge by the mother-of-one.

Mr Justice Kenneth Parker said Kancham lost control of her Honda Civic - with her husband, her mother-in-law and her four-year-old daughter in the car - as she pulled out onto Long Lane on October 5, last year.

Trying to avoid a collision, she accelerated and made "the situation obviously more perilous", veering onto the wrong side of the road in the direction of oncoming traffic, before "completely losing control of the vehicle."

He added that Mr Wright had said to his wife, "that car is going to hit us" moments before being flung into the air.

He died of head injuries at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington.

Kancham's barrister, Jonathan Laidlaw QC, said the challenge to her sentence should not be seen as detracting from the "devastating consequences for Mr Wright, his widow and his family".

But he argued that the seriousness of the offence was "overrated", and the care of her five-year-old daughter was not properly taken into account when the judge handed down the long jail term.

However, the senior judges said that this was unavoidable, and the original jail term was not "manifestly excessive."

A police officer at the cordon in Long Lane after the crash, top. A large section of the busy road was closed for investigation work to take place.