County Durham and Darlington PCC to meet families of victims who died on roads
Joy Allen is heading down to London
The Police and Crime Commissioner for County Durham and Darlington's meeting families later to help form strategies to prevent future road deaths.
Alongside her role, Joy Allen's taking on a new national joint-lead for roads policing title to drive positive changes in road safety.
She is going to be speaking to victims' families in London.
Joy said: "As a police and crime commissioner, I'm also a victims commissioner, so the victims come front and centre in what I do. I've been doing a lot of campaigns that actually originate from somebody who's a bereaved family member. The law needs to change to prevent any future deaths and seriously injured on our roads.
"My new police, crime and justice plan picks out vision 0 which is 0 deaths, 0 seriously injured on our roads, so we're looking at the moment public generally but importantly the victims because unfortunately they've suffered as a result of things that need to change.
"I think there's real opportunities. Sometimes out of tragedy it's a way for people who've lost somebody, it's really hard because those lives are precious and I know Marie, one of our victims, came up with a campaign about 'life is precious' and most of the those people killed and seriously injured on our roads are preventable.
"It's an opportunity for me to meet with people of a similiar mind who are very, very vocal within the community. They support each other. So there's a lot of campaigns going on and I support the victims very much so they're front and centre and I can get behind them and do my bit to support it.
"There's an opportunity for a new road stategy with 'what are we going to do to reduce people killed and seriously injured to 0?' So if we looked at drink and drug driving limits, similar to Scotland, but what we've learned with Scotland, you can reduce the limits but unless you've got the enforcement it's not as effective as what it can be."