Sarah Coombes MP: 'I'm fighting to make our roads safer'
Anyone who lives near Kenrick Way in West Brom has come to dread Friday and Saturday nights when as many as 50 cars congregate and treat the road like a race-track. Car cruising is a huge issue across the Black Country and leads to our streets feeling unsafe for everybody.
It’s not just organised racing that is the problem. One of the main things residents raise with me is speeding and dangerous driving. They fear that they will be hit crossing the road or while they are driving safely in their own car.
One family’s story has really stuck with me.
Eleven-year-old Safa who attends George Betts Primary had written with her classmates to the local council about their fears about speeding on Oldbury Road and a lack of safe places to cross. Tragically, Safa’s own grandmother was then killed by a car on that very stretch of road a year later. I’ve been campaigning alongside Safa’s family to improve the road and ensure no family goes through what they have had to.
Another constituent, Diane from Tividale, told me how her husband was killed by a woman who was on her phone while driving. Unbelievably, the driver did not immediately call 999, but instead called a relative, after hitting Diane’s husband. As the local MP I feel it’s my duty to try and make our streets safer and stop this kind of reckless, selfish driving that leaves families devastated.
I got the Secretary of State for Transport to visit West Brom alongside the Police and Crime Commissioner for the West Midlands and we talked about the Government’s determination to keep everyone safe.
The Minister agreed with me that action must be taken to stop senseless tragedies like these deaths occurring, and she committed to the government publishing a new Road Safety Strategy – the first for 10 years.
This is a step in the right direction. Everyone deserves to feel safe on our roads and on our streets, and I will keep fighting in West Brom and in Parliament to take on reckless drivers to end the Black Country’s road safety crisis for once and for all.
