A coroner’s call for restrictions on the ability of young and newly qualified drivers to carry young passengers has put the issue of dangerous teenage driving back into the spotlight.
Kate Robertson, the senior coroner for North West Wales, issued the warning after concluding the inquests into the deaths of an 18-year-old driver and his three teenage boy passengers.
Hugo Morris – who had passed his driving test six months earlier – was driving a Ford Fiesta along the A4085 in Garreg, Llanfrothen when he took a bend at speed and the car veered onto the nearside grass verge and entered into a water-filled drainage ditch.
Morris and his three passengers Wilfred Fitchett, 17, Jevon Hirst, 16 and Harvey Owen 17 all died of drowning.
The speed limit in the area was 60mph, but a forensic collision investigator told the inquest the fastest speed to negotiate the bend safely would be about 26mph and that there was an ‘understeer’ as Morris’s car rounded the bend at about 25mph.
Robertson decided to issue a prevention of future deaths report to the transport secretary today, stating: ‘The current vehicle licensing regime permits the carrying of young persons as passengers in circumstances such as these. I am concerned that deaths will continue to occur or will occur into the future where younger persons are carried in motor vehicles being driven by newly qualified and/or young drivers.’
In April a group of 40 bereaved parents formed a campaigning group called Forget-me-not Families Uniting which is calling on the government to introduce a graduated driving licensing scheme.
Nick Freeman, of Freeman & Co Solicitors, the motoring lawyer known as ‘Mr Loophole’, told the Gazette he supported newly qualified drivers, for their first two years on the road, having to wear a plate; having a compulsory black box fitted and to be allowed to carry passengers only in daylight hours.
‘We have had a huge problem with young drivers for years and years’, he said. ‘All we do is talk about it.’
But he added, regarding this week’s inquest: ‘I do point the finger of blame strongly here at the local council highways authority for not having an appropriate speed limit for this bend.’
