Another death on the road. Who cares?

In its 100-year life, the car has killed half a million people in Britain. But often the families of victims are excluded from court cases and even from the aftermath of an accident. Chris Arnot reports

The Lund family

Framed photographs of John Lund are much in evidence at his widow's home in Yorkshire. Here's Clare and John getting married in 1974. There's John being hugged by his 19-year-old daughter, Emma, in Tenerife at Easter this year. Oh yes, and here's John holding his granddaughter, Alethea.

The pictures serve as tangible reminders of a loved husband and father whose death they are struggling to come to terms with. A legal process that has kept them at arm's length has only added to their bitterness and bewilderment.

They wanted justice to be done to the man whose reckless driving caused them so much grief. And they wanted to see it being done. Yet they feel they have had neither. "We're left with a feeling that nothing has been concluded," says Clare. "We're still lost in it all."

John Lund is smiling broadly in those photographs, his youthful appearance belying his 42 years. His other daughter, Olivia, 18, says he was sometimes mistaken for her brother or boyfriend when they travelled together to support the Keighley Cougars Rugby League team.

She was out with her real boyfriend, Russ, on 21 May last year, the night her father was killed. John had returned home from an away match in high spirits. The Cougars had won. First he regaled Clare and Emma with the story of his day out, then he took the dog for its late-evening walk. He never came back. Olivia and Russ eventually discovered his battered body, still draped in a fluorescent sash he wore to show up in the dark. The family's springer spaniel limped home five hours later.

The Lunds live in a converted coach house on a main road running out of the village of Utley, near Keighley. John, a special needs teacher with a talent for DIY, had worked hard to make it a comfortable and stylish family home.

Directly outside is a no left turn sign. There is also a no entry sign at the bottom of the narrow, winding lane that runs past the side of the house. Anthony Jackson, a 23-year-old joiner, ignored both. And when his Vauxhall Cavalier hit John Lund, he ignored that too. He carried on driving the wrong way up a one-way street. More than 24 hours had passed before he was persuaded to give himself up to the police.

When he appeared at Bradford Crown Court five months later, Mrs Lund and her daughters were not present. This was not because they felt unable to face the ordeal - on the contrary, they desperately wanted to be there. Mrs Lund, a French teacher, wrote explaining that wish to the West Yorkshire Police Crown Court Liaison Department and the Criminal Justice Support Unit at Bradford central police station. But nobody told her the date of the trial.

Not the police, nor the Crown Prosecution Service.

The first the family knew about it was when a reporter from the Bradford Telegraph and Argus arrived on their doorstep to ask what they thought of the verdict. "Derisory," was the short answer to that. Jackson had pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving (by far the most serious of six motoring offences with which he was charged). The maximum sentence could have been 10 years. Instead, he was sent to prison for three and banned from driving for five.

What's more, he never had to come face to face with the family he had damaged so much. "We wanted him to see us," says Emma. "To see what he had done to us. As it is, he just walked in and out of court without that embarrassment."

Her mother had two further reasons for wanting to be there. "For one thing, we were John's representatives. We wanted to show that there were people there who cared about him. Secondly, it's an important part of the grieving process to come to terms with what has happened. It could have answered questions and closed certain chapters for us. All along the line I felt we were excluded from the legal process.

West Yorkshire Police has accepted responsibility, apologised to Mrs Lund and set up an internal inquiry.

Meanwhile, she has written to the Home Secretary, Michael Howard, in an attempt to ensure that no other family is kept out of court in similar circumstances. "You can have as many Victim's Charters as you like," she says. "But at the end of the day it's just a piece of paper."

The Marchi family

Rita and Peter Marchi live on a large private housing estate in Coventry, the city at the hub of this year's centenary celebrations for the mass- produced motor car. But there is no celebrating at their house.

Not that they are against motor vehicles. After all, Peter drives a lorry for a living. The Marchis are simply aware, through bitter personal experience, that a car in the wrong hands can be a lethal weapon.

Their eldest son, Stuart, was killed last year. He was 19, 6ft 7in, bursting with energy, an Air Force cadet who enjoyed bungee-jumping and sky-diving. Yet the risk that turned out to be fatal was reluctantly to allow a friend to move into the driver's seat of an Austin Maestro after he stopped for petrol on their way home from a pool hall.

Mandip Purewal, also 19, proceeded to drive at 70mph in a 30mph area. When he hit a stationary Ford Transit van on the right-hand side of the road, it was shunted 20 metres. Stuart, in the passenger seat, took the brunt of the impact.

Purewal escaped unhurt, but pleaded guilty to dangerous driving. He was jailed for five years. "It was more than we expected but less than we hoped," says Rita. "My son died purely and simply because of that driver. If he'd gone out with a loaded shot gun, he'd have got 15 years. The courts don't treat death in a car seriously enough. It's thought to be bad luck."

Almost a year had passed before the Marchis were given details of exactly how their son died. Rita, in particular, needed to know. "Sometimes there's nothing worse than imagination," she says. "For four months after, I would pass the spot and see a big stain on the pavement. I thought it was his blood, but of course it was oil. Nobody would let me near the car on the night it happened. It was like a circus with crowds of people looking on. I was ushered away by a fireman."

At the hospital, the couple were left for hours with no information. Rita had to corner a ward sister to confirm what she already knew in her heart of hearts. "By the time I saw my son he had been a corpse for four hours."

Because of the court case there was no inquest. And because Purewal pleaded guilty, few details emerged. Nobody from the Crown Prosecution Service told the victim's parents when the case would be heard. "I had to keep ringing the court," Peter recalls.

Both feel strongly that the CPS and the emergency services need drastically to improve the way they deal with bereaved relatives. "You're an embarrassment," says Rita, "and nobody knows what to do with you."

The O'Brien family

Peter O'Brien was nine and he had been learning about road safety at school. With some misgivings, his mother agreed to allow him to cross a main road on his own. Only at a zebra crossing, mind you, and only if she was watching him all the way to the other side.

It was late afternoon when they came out of a video shop in Feltham, Middlesex, and stood patiently by the crossing. "It was a dual carriageway," Rosalie O'Brien recalls, her voice still tremulous with emotion five years on. "I thought it would be better because he could stop in the middle."

He never got that far, although the traffic had stopped on both sides of the central reservation. Three-quarters of his way across the first carriageway, his mother's attention was distracted by his sister, Sarah, then three and in a buggy. "As I glanced down, there was a sound like an explosion. I looked up again and he was 30 yards up the road."

The white Ford Escort van that killed Peter had pulled out from behind a stationary bus. Adam Gibbs, 21, a student living in Sunbury, had been in a hurry to meet his girlfriend. The court case was delayed so that he could complete his final exams.

Almost a year passed before Mrs O'Brien was called to give evidence. Gibbs pleaded not guilty to reckless driving. Only after a sustained campaign, backed by a petition, had the Crown Prosecution Service agreed to increase the charge from the lesser offence of driving without due care.

In the lengthy build-up to the trial at Isleworth Crown Court, Gibbs was free to drive. He made no attempt to apologise to the victim's mother. When she plucked up courage to ring his home, she was told he was on holiday.

Meanwhile, Mrs O'Brien was given the "support" of a police inspector with all the sensitivity of a lump of granite. At one point he complained to her about the amount of paperwork the case was causing him.

Gibbs was eventually fined pounds 500 and banned for four years. He is now free to drive again. "I didn't want him put in jail," says Mrs O'Brien. "But I would have liked him to be given community service in a hospital where they deal with road accidents. I know we have to have cars, but too many people seem to treat accidents as just the price we have to pay. Death on the road is not taken seriously enough. Too often the drivers walk away without it touching their lives at all."

What happens in court?

Of the past year's 3,600 deaths on British roads, fewer than 300 were dealt with in the Crown Court. Road Peace, the charity that supports road accident victims, is pressing for relatives to be kept better informed. Its spokeswoman, Brigitte Chaudhry, says: "Most are dealt with by magistrates. Drivers invariably plead guilty to careless driving. The case is over in five minutes. No witnesses are called and the fact that somebody has been killed is hardly mentioned."