'Daddy's dead': How victims of road accidents are being forgotten and failed

16 November 2024, 14:57 | Updated: 17 November 2024, 01:39

Victims of road accidents are being forgotten and failed by a lack of support, a leading charity has warned.

In 2023, 1,695 people died on Britain's roads and a further 28,967 were seriously injured. Over the last five years, neither figure has significantly reduced.

And behind each of those numbers is a grieving family, many of whom don't have access to the necessary support.

Road safety charity Brake says something needs to change and on Monday it is launching a new Road Victim's Charter in Westminster, and urging the government to back it.

The charter calls for a number of measures to ensure road victims get the support they need.

These include a set of national standards for how authorities should respond following a crash, and as well as extending the rights set out in the victim's code to those impacted by road harm, regardless of whether a crime has occurred.

It would impact victims like Ciara Lee, who lost her husband Eddy in 2018 to a fatal crash. He was thrown from his motorbike after being hit by a dangerous driver, and died eight days later in hospital. Their son, Seren, was just two years old.

"When my son woke up and said: 'Where's Daddy?'. "I said: 'he's dead'," Ciara told Sky News at her home in Berkshire.

"I knew I had to be really definite with it. He was two, still in nappies. It was important for me to tell him 'it was not your daddy's choice to die'. It was out of his control."

Ciara has since got her life back on track, but the trauma of that experience will never leave her.

"It's massively valuable that people get the support they need. I've managed to rebuild my life. My son's really happy. But there's a massive gaping hole. The difference between normal people and people who've experienced a road death is that we carry this unimaginable darkness with us. It's all the time. And we'll never shake it because we know someone was taken from us that should be here."

Lucy Straker, campaign manager at Brake, said the charity's ultimate aim is to see the number of road deaths reduced to zero.

"No progress is actually being made on reducing road deaths," she said. "And what we've seen in our National Road Victim Service is that need for support growing and growing as well, because it doesn't just go away after a week or two weeks.

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"We think that everybody who is bereaved or seriously affected by road harm should have access to trauma-informed support."

In a statement, the Department for Transport said: "Every death on our roads is a tragedy, and our thoughts remain with the families of everyone who has lost a loved one in this way.

"We are committed to reducing the numbers of those killed and injured on our roads, and we are developing a road safety strategy which we will set out more details on in due course."