Road Safety

Jodie Gosling Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jodie Gosling (Nuneaton) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Andy MacNae) for initiating this important debate.

I have heard many passionate arguments tonight about why our roads should be safer, and about deaths that were waiting to happen and were preventable, but I have been involved in a situation in which a death actually happened. Even after an 11-year-old was killed on one of our roads, we had to fight and campaign with his grieving mother for the road to be improved.

Harley James Jackson was killed during his first half-term at secondary school. His mum had to campaign to persuade the county council to make the improvements to that road, and it took two and a half years. We were told that the mean average speed on the road of 38 mph was within the expected range, although speeds of 5 mph and 80 mph at 8 pm were recorded in the speed data. The data is not consistent. We were also told by the safety officer during our campaign that there were 50 roads with similar speed characteristics but there was funding for only two.

This death could have been prevented. We knew that the road was dangerous; the community had said so, and the community campaigned. I can guarantee that no one knows more about that road than the mother of that child, who has campaigned ever since. We need to listen to these people in order to prevent such things from happening again.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

That was a very powerful speech. I call Amanda Martin to make the final Back-Bench contribution.