'Look at me, look at my loss, and don't speed'

High-speed driving costs countless young lives. But how do you tell that to teenagers who feel immortal? Emma Brooker meets the women bringing the message home

Erica Thomasson is the ultimate proud mum. She shows a picture of her son, Mark, aged 18, blonde and suntanned, confident with a big grin. He's a swimming instructor, car-mad, she explains, and not just her son but her best friend too. "We're that close". She's talking to a group of Derbyshire teenagers and you can sense their pleasure in listening to what she says. This is probably the way their mums talk about them when they're not around to overhear.

But as she talks, Erica starts to waver between the present and past tense, and the pleasure in listening to her is short-lived. For all her pride, she looks terribly crushed - like someone who has been winded and is still trying to get her breath back. Despite her carefully applied make-up, her face is clearly etched with pain. Her teenage audience starts to look uncomfortable. Some study the floor, others squirm in their chairs. One boy is red in the face, clenching his teeth, holding back tears.

Most of them have guessed before Erica explains the reason why she has come to tell them about Mark: just over a year ago her car-mad son killed himself - speeding in his new car. "Mark's dad repeatedly warned him that driving a car was like being put in control of a lethal weapon," says Erica. "His lack of respect and disregard for that fact were what killed him."

She is one of three women who have lost their teenage relatives through speed-driving on Derbyshire's roads. Their loss is not unusual. The accidents merited only a few paragraphs in the local press because a third of all car-driver casualties are aged under 25.

The same group accounted for nearly 40 per cent of road casualties in Derbyshire last year. National statistics show that the risk of fatal or serious accident is six times higher for 17- to 20-year-olds than it is for over-40s.

While younger drivers tend not to be drink-drivers, speed is a major killer, particularly among young men. A third of accidents involving male drivers under 20 are one-car accidents.

That means the driver simply lost control, drove into a tree, wall, oncoming vehicle, or flipped over. He may have had a stereo blaring and his mates in the back to show off to, and it is almost certain he was speeding.

The statistics are endless but of little use in getting the message across. Drink-driving has been stigmatised through advertising, and images of children, friends or partners killed through speed-driving have a big emotional impact, but the "don't kill yourself" message is harder to get across. People, particularly teenagers, can't imagine it so they just switch off.

When Erica comes and displays her grief to them, however, they think again. She doesn't tell them not to speed, she just says, "Look at me, look at my loss, don't ever do this to someone who cares about you. How would you like it to be your mum sitting here talking?"

The project, started by a local policeman, Sergeant Andy Peck, is the first of its kind in Britain. Peck believes it is the most effective way of getting the message across to teenagers, and he hopes to see his Young Driver Education Project taken up throughout the country.

Sergeant Peck started taking bereaved relatives to talk to local sixth- formers a year ago. As head of road traffic in Derbyshire's High Peak and Dales district, he has the unenviable job of breaking the bad news to relatives when there is a fatal road accident in the area.

"Last week I had to tell a woman that both her husband and son had been killed," he sighs. It's a task he hates and one that gets tougher rather than easier with repetition. "I feel so hopeless," he explains.

"Everyone knows who Leah Betts is and how she died," Sergeant Peck continues, "but how many people know the name of a local youngster killed by speeding? There are plenty of them, it's just that road deaths are somehow acceptable. I don't see why. If it was a drug or a murderer going killing these teenagers, the whole nation would be up in arms."

Determined to bring about some change, after years of seeing the same thing happen time and again, Peck approached the family of John Cooper, a 17-year-old killed by speeding, and asked for a photograph of their son to include in an education pack. John's sister Jenny, now 16, showed interest and asked if she could write a short piece about her brother to go with the photo.

Erica and another mother, Sue Bagshaw, whose son Lee killed himself speeding the day after his 20th birthday, also contributed photos and texts. Their messages seemed really to touch the teenagers Peck was talking to, so he suggested the three women come into schools with him and read them out.

"I came along to watch initially, because I didn't know how I'd feel about talking," says Erica. But all three women found that they wanted to speak. John Cooper's family gave Peck permission to use shocking video footage shot by the police car which went out to the scene of the accident. Shot at night, the video follows the country roads John drove down before going under the back of a tractor trailer, and shows the scene of the accident - hay bales and dry stone walls bathed in blue flashing light. John had been heading home along a road he'd driven down 20 times already that weekend.

All three women wanted to salvage something positive from the devastating experience of losing someone in an avoidable car accident. "Mark would want me to be here, to tell everyone what a fool he was," says Erica. But both she and Sue have also found talking publicly to strangers about their grief surprisingly liberating and therapeutic.

"People who know you can't bear to talk to you about it," says Sue. "They cross to the other side of the street and walk away because they don't know what to say.

"It's a taboo subject, and some people prefer to pretend that Mark never existed. My other son hasn't mentioned his name since the accident," adds Erica. "It's the only place where we can talk quite freely about our children and it's a great relief."

Not so relieved are the teenagers who have been listening to them in one of the classrooms at Highfield School, Matlock. Speaking to small groups of up to 10 sixth-formers throughout the day, all three women tell their stories graphically, sparing no detail.

Sue describes hearing the sirens, in blissful ignorance, as police and firemen sped past her house to the scene of her son's death. Shortly afterwards came the worried call from Lee's workmate asking if he had overslept. "It's just that there's been a bad accident up the road involving a car like Lee's," he told her. The next time she saw Lee, she was identifying him on a mortuary slab. "Oh Lee, you silly sod," her daughter wailed at his lifeless body.

Erica describes arriving at the scene of her son's accident and finding complete carnage - "Mark's car was upside-down, the roof was a pool of blood, my husband was on his hands and knees on the pavement, crying his eyes out." She goes on to explain that the accident happened a week before Mark's 19th birthday; he was buried with his cards and presents, and his employers told Erica that they were about to offer her son a permanent contract. "How ironic that he was never to know that he was about to achieve his other heart's desire!"

The women's pain is still very much in evidence, but using their grief as a shock tactic on teenagers who have barely considered their own mortality seems to be effective. They shuffle out of the room, pale and visibly shaken, uncertain what to say.

"It needs to be something personal to get that message across," says 17-year-old Michelle Tipping. A friend of hers, Andrew Worthy, just a year older than her, died this winter, driving too fast in icy weather. His name is also down on Andy Peck's list of 11 young local men killed at the wheel in the last year and the five passengers that died with them.

"Andrew's accident made me a very careful driver," Michelle claims. "I'd say half of his friends have stopped speeding. The other half, particularly the boys, still do. It's a way of showing off."

Others were moved by the women's openness. "I think they're very brave," commented Ben Mosley. "When you're 17 and have got your whole life ahead of you, you don't think about death. But listening to these mothers talk, it really hits home."

Whether or not this short, sharp shock will endure a whole carefree summer of whizzing down country lanes, windows down, car stereos blaring, remains to be seen. But for those moments when these young drivers might feel tempted to step on the accelerator because it feels so good to be alive, Erica has one parting shot.

"I want you to think of someone who's really special to you, " she concludes. "Think of how they smell, think of the things they do that really annoy you. Now try to imagine that you're never going to see them again. Try to imagine how that feels. That's what happened to me when my son Mark died in his car. He was speeding."