The mother of Matthew Parke who died in a car crash in Derry Hill at the age of 19, has joined a call for the government to place tighter restrictions on newly-qualified young drivers.
As part of the campaign group - Forget-me-not Families Uniting, Amanda Parke is among 40 bereaved families demanding immediate action to tackle 'the unacceptable and disproportionately high number of young driver and passenger deaths on UK roads'.
Matthew was one of four young men killed on the A4, Derry Hill near Calne in August 2020.
Matthew, Corey Owen and Ryan Nelson were in a car, driven by Jordan Rawlings who had been driving at about 120mph when the car left the road at a corner and hit a house before coming to rest on its side and catching fire.
The newly-formed campaign group says that 'enough is enough' and is campaigning for the introduction of ‘graduated licences’ which would restrict driving privileges for the under 24s in the first six months of driving.
Amanda told us: "The driver who killed my son had been driving for a while, but had he been through a gradual licensing process, maybe he would have thought twice about his actions that night.".
1 in 5 young drivers crash within a year of passing their test and 1500 are killed or seriously injured every year.
The Forget-Me-Not Families Uniting campaign group is dedicated to introducing a gradual driving licence process in the UK. This process would involve newly qualified young drivers having to go through a minimum number of hours supervised driving following their passing a test and a ban on them carrying passengers in their car for a set period of time.
Already in place in countries like America, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, graduated licenses encourage greater concentration and skill levels in young drivers by forbidding them to carry other young passengers in their car and limiting times and road conditions that they can venture out in in the first six months of qualifying.
In those countries, graduated licence control has brought about a significant reduction in the number of crashes involving young drivers.
Amanda is hoping to connect with other families locally, who have lost a child at the hands of an inexperienced driver, in order to drive the campaign forward in Wiltshire.
She said: "Please take a look at the poster. All of these beautiful young people died at the hands of an inexperienced driver including my own son.
"This is a hard poster to look at. Each of these beautiful young people were somebody’s child, somebody’s brother or sister, grandchild, niece or nephew, somebody’s cousin, somebody’s friend. Each of these beautiful boys and girls died in the most horrific circumstances.
"None of us think such a tragedy could happen to our family - but it can."
On Monday, motoring organisation The AA announced their support for the campaign, calling for the UK to bring in a graduated driving licence. The driving organisation says motorists should be prevented from carrying passengers of a similar age for at least 6 months after passing their tests.
If you would like to contact Amanda you can email her here:
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