A motorist who smashed into a family's car while looking at his mobile phone has been jailed for 10 years for killing a mother and three children.
Tracy Houghton, 45, her sons Ethan, 13, and Josh, 11, and stepdaughter Aimee Goldsmith, also 11, died in the crash on the A34, near Newbury in Berkshire, on August 10.
Lorry driver Tomasz Kroker ploughed into the family's stationary car at 50mph while scrolling through music on his mobile phone.
Their car was shunted underneath the back of a heavy goods vehicle and crushed to a third of its size.
The family, from Bedfordshire, who were making their way home from a camping holiday in Devon, were killed instantly.
Kroker, from Andover in Hampshire, broke down at the scene, crying and saying to himself: "I've killed them."
But he also tried to claim his brakes had failed, telling officers the traffic in front of him "just stopped - I hit my brakes but just couldn't stop".
The court heard the 30-year-old was so distracted by his phone he barely looked at the road for almost a kilometre.
Sentencing Kroker on Monday at Reading Crown Court, Judge Maura McGowan told him his attention to the road was so poor, he "might as well have had his eyes closed".
Just an hour before the pile-up he had signed a declaration to his employer, promising he would not use his phone at the wheel.
His truck smashed into a stationary queue of two lorries and four smaller vehicles which were stuck behind a slow-moving articulated lorry near the villages of East and West Ilsley at around 5.10pm.
A man was seriously injured and four other people hurt in the crash.
Dash-cam footage showed Kroker using his phone less than a second before impact, looking up with sudden horror on his face.
His lorry ploughed into a Mazda which was thrown onto its roof, before smashing into a Citroen driven by Ms Houghton's partner Mark Goldsmith, who was with his 13-year-old son Jake.
Their car was shunted into Ms Houghton's Vauxhall Corsa.
Prosecutor Charles Ward-Jackson said: "It is a particularly distressing feature that the two surviving members of the family were in the car behind, and a 13-year-old boy was forced to witness at close range the deaths of four members of close family."
Aimee's mother Kate Goldsmith said the prison term "does not do justice to the crime committed".
In a family statement outside the court, she said Kroker's actions turned his lorry into a "lethal weapon".
"He was so distracted, he made no attempt to slow down. The sentence of 10 years in prison will not ease our pain and suffering," she said.
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