'Safety net' for road victims crucial, says Cambridgeshire mother
A Road Victims' Charter for victims and the bereaved has been set up
A Cambridgeshire mum whose husband died in a road traffic collision feels around the clock help can help those who've lost loved ones.
Road safety campaigners want the Government to sign up to a Road Victims' Charter to help better support victims and others affected by road traffic collisions.
Brake - the charity behind the Charter - says survivors and those left bereaved are being forgotten and failed by a lack of support.
Chelsie Roberts lost her husband motorcyclist Brad when he collided with a Nissan Qashqai on the A1101 near Littleport at the Mile End Road junction.
Going to bed was 'trigger'
"The main thing I noticed was that bedtime was the trigger because that was the time I should have been going to bed with my husband and I wasn't," she recalled.
"That was the time when the loneliness and grief crept in the most, but also the time when most of the services were offline and you don't have that support, and you can't ring up your friends because it's 2am in the morning."
In the Charter, Brake want national standards introduced when dealing with post-crash response, as well as recognition of the trauma caused by a sudden road death or injury.
Figures from the Department for Transport (DfT) found in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough last year, 428 people were killed or seriously injured on roads, a fall on the year before.
Nationally, the DfT said 29,711 people were killed or seriously injured in 2023.
"It's important you have a safety net"
Chelsie - a mother-of-two - wants to set up a campaign in Brad's memory to help vehicle drivers become more aware of bikers.
She said the level of support she received soon after Brad's death was helpful, and that any improvement to the help given to victims and the bereaved is positive.
"It's bene difficult to process a lot of the things I've had to witness and endure in the past nine months, and having those support services have given me a point of contact that I've been able to release some of this pressure to," Chelsie said.
"It's very odd to be one moment, you're in one situation and then all of a sudden, you're placed in this administrative role you don't understand and there's a lot of feelings involved; it's important you have a safety net around you because it's not easy.
"If there could be a service that could help explain what this process is and provide a person that can fill a bit of that void might help people make it through the other side."
Review into fatal collisions - council
A spokesperson for Cambridgeshire County Council said it's working with other local agencies to “review all fatal collisions that occur in our county to assess whether safety improvements are needed.
"The format we have developed for these reviews is being replicated across the UK and championed by the Road Safety Foundation and the Department for Transport as Best Practice."
A Government spokesperson 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.”