Polly Herbert, Partner in the Serious Injury Team at Hugh James has acted for many clients with life changing injuries and supported bereaved families for nearly 20 years.
Each time I meet a new client and their family, the worst has happened and they are a family in crisis. Whilst we gather a legal team around them and try our best to help them adjust to their new lives, help them with their loss or help them gain independence, all our clients would prefer this had not happened.
They just want to turn back the clock and not to be in this position.
One case that stays close to me involved the death of a teenaged girl, just walking to school. I can remember the initial call from her Dad, the grief, the pain and the anger. The Defendant was speeding in a 30mph area.
This girl lost her life.
It was all so senseless.
It was avoidable.
It wasn’t an “accident”.
The driver decided to take risks that day and the person who paid the price was an innocent girl. I know it’s not popular to talk about speeding and sticking to the limit; I regularly drive through our village at 30mph and am tailgated aggressively. The traffic on our roads seem more aggressive then ever, people believe they are the most important person using the road.
It’s hard to be patient and considerate sometimes – and this is regardless of whether you are using the road as a driver, cyclist or pedestrian. It would be great if this could be spoken about more and people understand what the real costs of such anti-social behaviour is: 5 deaths per day and 24,000 life changing injuries per year.
If we were all just a little more patient and respectful of other road users, I wonder how much we could reduce this figure by? How many families would not have to go through what the family of the teenager had to go through and still endure? How many people would not have their lives dramatically changed due to injury?