Victims of road crashes need justice. Sympathy is not enough

About 200 people are expected at Leeds Minster for a remembrance servicethis afternoon, most of them relatives of the 40,053 men, women and children killed on Britain’s roads between 2000 and 2014. At 24 other services across Britain and hundreds more across the world, people will gather at similar occasions to remember their loved ones.

World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims began in the UK and was adopted by the UN 10 years ago. Since then an estimated 12 million people have been killed in crashes, but a first glance at the UK figures is reassuring: deaths and serious injuries have almost halved since 2000, and almost halved in the 20 years before that. The 1% increase in deaths last year (4% if you add serious injuries) may have been a blip

Dig deeper, though, and scarier numbers start to emerge – especially if you mainly travel the streets on your feet, or by bicycle, or if you are young or old. Vulnerable road users have not benefited from safety improvements to the same extent as drivers, a fact acknowledged in this year’s Conservative manifesto. Road safetyminister Andrew Jones will be at one of Sunday’s services.

Remembrance, as the arguments around poppies prove, is complicated. Sgt Gabe Snuggs, organiser of Hampshire’s first road traffic service, sees it as “an opportunity for people to remember” and for the emergency services to show respect. For Leeds organiser Jemma Armitage, there is a parallel emphasis on “raising awareness” of the ways in which campaigners say road crash victims are failed.

People make mistakes in cars and lorries, just as they do on bikes and on foot, and most car crashes are not caused by criminals – although exactly how absent-minded you have to be behind the wheel before your conduct is classed as criminal is a moot point. But drivers do break the law, with almost half admitting to exceeding the 30mph speed limit. One in four fatal crashes in the UK involves a speeding driver, while one in seven involves a driver who is drunk. Last year 315 drivers were convicted of causing a death.

Yet the victims in these cases do not qualify for the same treatment as victims of other crimes, and the differences are apparent from the scene of the crash, when the rules governing investigations are different from other situations when a death or serious injury has occurred. Successive government reports havehighlighted a lack of specialist training for prosecutors, while sentencing is regarded by many victims and campaigners as unduly light, with what victims’ charity Roadpeace terms “a perceived right to drive” influencing judges who almost never impose lifetime driving bans.

This year families won the right to challenge charging decisions, and from Monday, thanks to the EU victims directive, people injured in road crashes where a crime is alleged will be entitled to the same treatment as other victims of crime. Language, too, is changing, with the morally charged “car accident” – with its assertion that no one is to blame – replaced with the more neutral “collision” or “crash”.

Remembrance services are about comfort, especially valuable when people feel a traumatic event has not been properly acknowledged. But such gatherings can also be opportunities to muster the strength required by victims such as Kerry Dean, who has fought for new hit-and-run laws since her 20-year-old son Sean Morley was left for dead at a roadside in 2012.

Such changes won’t bring loved ones back. But families, however shocking their bereavements, do find consolation in justice, and often say so in the statements read out on courtroom steps. Such consolation is too often denied those whose loved ones have met their violent ends on the roads.