We write to express how betrayed our family feels by the British legal system.

Where is the justice in a sentence of five-and-a-half years for the death of two young women and the maiming of a third by a man driving over the alcohol limit and without a driving licence or insurance?

With good behaviour, Graham Travers will leave prison in about three years. Surely a fairer sentence would be eight or nine years. Then at least we would feel the law recognised the severity of his crime.

We appreciate that prisons are overcrowded and understaffed but should victims' families, who have no say in the allocated budget or staffing levels of our penal system, be asked to bear the brunt of failed policies on top of the loss of loved ones? Justice is not served by this strategy.

The sentencing system will only act as a meaningful deterrent when potential offenders know that to take a life will mean the loss of their freedom by heavy sentences that will not be commuted for good behaviour.

We, along with many others, would like to see drinking and driving a car (in the words of Judge Rafferty "the most dangerous of weapons") attract a severe prison sentence and a lifetime ban when crippling or causing the death of others.

Would anyone who discharged a loaded gun and killed or injured somebody, however unintentionally, expect to a hold a firearms licence again? We think not.

The pain and grief at the loss of those we love cannot ever be healed by any amount of punishment but it only adds insult to injury when the law puts so little value on a person's life by handing out such derisory penalties.

If, as in Sweden, we had a total ban on drinking alcohol when driving, citizens would know exactly where they stood in law. There would be no grey areas or disputes. The breathalyser would convict them.

The very least we should expect from our Parliament is that they bring our drink-driving limits to the lower level of many of our European neighbours.

In the meantime, many families bear the devastation and loss of those they love with a deep feeling of betrayal.

Betrayal that the law (that until now we had thought we could count on for justice) has let down the law-abiding citizens of Britain.

-Dawn Sutton (Victoria's grandmother), Colin Sutton (Victoria's grandfather), Cynthia Goldthorpe (Victoria's great aunt), Brighton