‘He couldn’t see the risks himself’: mother of teenager killed in Wales crash calls for graduated driving licence law | Road safety

At the age of 17, Harvey Owen was just beginning to figure out what he wanted to do with his life.

The student had dreams of opening an Italian-style cafe or building a pizza van to drive to festivals after passing his driving test, and was gaining experience working part-time at a sourdough pizza restaurant in his hometown of Shrewsbury.

Having recently hung up his skateboard on his guitar, he spends most of his days playing songs from his favorite bands and musicians – The Beatles, Gerry Rafferty, Jimi Hendrix.

“He was always just in his pajamas and playing his guitar,” said his mother, Crystal Owen. “But lately, every time I’ve come home, he’s been opening a cookbook and talking about opening a little cafe to sell sourdough breads that he’s made.”

But in November, Harvey Owen died along with his three friends Jevon Hirst, 16, Wilf Fitchett, 17, and Hugo Morris, 18, as they traveled through Snowdonia (Eriri) on a camping trip. The boys were found in the overturned and partially submerged car two days after they were last seen.

Just days after their deaths, Crystal Owen was told about graduated driving licenses – already implemented in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada – which place restrictions on young, newly qualified drivers while they gain experience.

“I was just in complete disbelief. When I looked at the actual numbers and how effective it was in every single country when it was implemented, I was so angry that it’s still not here despite years of discussion,” she said. “I think it’s a no-brainer, it would have saved Harvey’s life and it would have saved so many others.”

Last week Batley and Spen Labor MP Kim Ledbeater tabled a new bill in parliament which would impose restrictions on new drivers for six months, including a zero alcohol limit, restrictions on night driving and controls on the number of passengers they could carry. wear Research shows that newly qualified drivers with a car full of passengers of the same age are four times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash than when driving alone.

Owen would also like learner drivers to be required to complete a minimum of 40 hours of behind-the-wheel training before being allowed to hit the roads completely freely.

“Seven out of 10 accidents involving young drivers are on rural roads. In Harvey’s case it was a wet country road and they were on a bend. The speed limit was 60mph but only an experienced driver would know you can’t actually do that,’ she said. “The anger is not with the driver, he was a young lad, it could just as easily have been Harvey.”

She has started a petition and works together with about 90 other families as part of Reuniting the families of forget-me-notsa group of families who have lost a young person in a car crash to rally cross-party support Leadbeater’s account. They are supported by dozens of charities and road organisations, including the RAC, AA, Road Peace and Brake.

But Owen is skeptical the bill will pass: it could face fierce opposition from people who say it will take away young people’s rights and freedoms and be difficult to police.

“I understand that young people’s rights are important. They say it’s an infringement on their freedom, but what greater infringement on their freedom is the loss of life?” she said.

“Almost all the road safety precautions that are in place are self-monitoring anyway. Of course, this won’t stop 100% of these crashes. But most of them are not caused by people being deliberately stupid, they are caused by inexperience. This would remind young people to take extra precautions.

There will be exemptions for work, medical and emergency reasons, she said. Other benefits would be reducing insurance premiums for young drivers and helping to strengthen parental guidance on road safety.

Owen said Harvey told her he would Wales with friends, but she was tricked into believing a parent was driving them and had no idea they intended to go camping. “He wasn’t a bad boy. But he’s a teenager. So sometimes they will twist the truth just to get their freedom. And there’s no way you can monitor a teenager 24 hours a day,” she said. “He couldn’t see the risks himself.”

She was initially worried the day after the boys left when a WhatsApp message went unread. She started calling their friends to ask if anyone had heard from them, but was told they probably just didn’t have a phone signal.

“Everyone said, ‘They’re in Wales, for God’s sake, they’ve got no signal, we can’t get through to any of them.’ They were all just like I’m over it and I just need to calm down and he’s fine,” she said. “It was the next day when they were due to go home that I called the police.”

She had been told to stay at home rather than travel to Wales, so there would certainly be a phone signal if Harvey called. She set a timer on her phone to call the police every 30 minutes for an update. But she couldn’t wait and left for Snowdonia. “Then the panic set in. It’s so huge I just couldn’t see how we were ever going to find them,” she said.

After all, it was the boys’ car spotted by a truck driver who was tall enough to see over the trees covering the view of a moat swollen with water. Autopsy completed the four had drowned.

The news of the boys’ deaths left Owen in “absolute disbelief”. She couldn’t get out of bed for weeks and her business, a pastry shop in Shrewsbury, was completely forgotten. “My passion for my business is now completely gone,” she said. “You do everything for your children and to create a better life for them, and then you think it can all just disappear in the blink of an eye.”

Owen has launched a campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of the road and hopes the new bill could be the first step towards reducing the number of young people killed – they make up a fifth of all people killed or seriously injured on the UK’s roads kingdom.

“Even if this law is passed, it will never bring Harvey back. But I know I can’t sit by when there is such an easy solution to stop so many of these deaths,” she said.