West Yorkshire Police Officers will be walking, running, cycling, or horse riding 1,766 miles this week, in an effort to tackle road safety, with the national charity RoadPeace.
This is due to 1,766 casualties on UK roads in 2022.
The annual charity mission is set to bring emergency services, bereaved families, businesses, schools and communities together, in order to make a united stand against road deaths and injury.
In West Yorkshire alone, 65 people died on the roads in 2022, and a further 1,348 people were seriously injured as a result of a road traffic collision.
Karen Strong, mum of teenage son who was killed in Otley, by a speeding drink-driver in 2010, has been persistent in her ‘Stop The Danger Drivers Campaign’ over the years and expresses that: “everything that we can pull together to make things different, either as a deterrent or to stop families suffering in the aftermath, is a good thing”.
Head of West Yorkshire Police’s Roads Policing Unit, Chief Inspector James Farrar is very proud by the number of his officers who have signed up to this weeks challenge: “As a Roads Policing Officer, I have, on too many occasions, experienced first-hand, the unimaginable trauma and heartache such loss has on families, friends and communities”.
Mr Farrar also claims that the number of deaths in 2022 is: “1,766 too many deaths and that is why as a Force we are committed to reducing road deaths as part of West Yorkshire’s Vision Zero strategy”.
Vision Zero states that the five main causes for these collisions are: careless driving, drink and drug driving, not wearing a seatbelt, using a mobile phone, and speeding.
This strategy is to reduce the number of people killed, and those that are seriously injured on the roads, by 50% by 2030, and to zero by 2040.
RoadPeace was set up by Brigitte Chaudhry MBE in 1992, whose son was killed in a road traffic accident by a red light offender. Chaudhry believes that the charity’s vision: “is for a world where road danger is not tolerated and where road crash victims receive justice and compassion”.
RoadPeace gave a statement from a bereaved daughter of a victim claiming that the charity “has helped me so much, and I’m glad that there’s a place to go when you feel so isolated and alone”.
More information about the 2024 RoadPeace Challenge can be found here.