The driver who killed himself and three others by driving the wrong way up the M6 performed a U-turn on the southbound carriageway, his family said today.

Relatives of the 27-year-old motorist named the lone driver as Zimbabwean student Tauya Marengereke.

It remained a mystery today whether Mr Marengereke deliberately drove in the wrong direction or was simply confused.

The hired Ford Fusion he was driving collided with a Peugeot 406 on the southbound carriageway at Junction 8, the link with the M5.

All three of the Peugeot’s passengers died instantly in the crash at 5.30am on Sunday, while its 23-year-old driver was today in a stable condition. All four were from London.

Mr Marengereke’s family, who he lived with in Brighton, revealed police had told them he had parked on the hard shoulder for 30 minutes, before doing a U-turn and driving northwards up the southbound carriageway.

They also said he had sat his final exam for an Aerospace Engineering degree at the University of Liverpool just last Friday.

They said: “He was the most reliable driver you could want behind a steering wheel. He has driven for four years in this country and knows all the motorways. He has driven us from Brighton to Scotland and back, so it’s really hard to understand what happened here.”

His family added that he went to a party in Manchester on Saturday. He left the party early on Sunday, intending to stop first at a friend’s house in Milton Keynes before visiting his girlfriend in Reading.

Detectives were unavailable for comment today.