Women's insurance news
20/03/2009

Car crash peer vows to promote road safety

Specialist women's car insurance providers believe more needs to be done to improve road safety around the UK and can today report that the Tory peer who was jailed for dangerous driving has pledged to become a vehement advocate of the subject.

Lord Ahmed of Rotherham was involved in a fatal car accident on Christmas Day 2007. In court it was revealed that he had made and received a string of texts from his mobile phone, ending only ten minutes before his Jaguar hit a stationary vehicle in the outside lane of the M1.

The driver of the stationary car died after the impact.

The 52-year-old peer received a 12 week jail sentence, but was freed on appeal after 16 days.

He told the BBC, "As far as the road safety campaigners are concerned I hope to work with them in future because we should have road safety - I made a mistake, people make mistakes."

It was agreed by police, the sentencing judge and the Court of Appeal that Lord Ahmed's mobile phone use was not attributable to the actual cause of the crash.

A spokesperson for CoverGirl, providers of women's car insurance, said, "Making people aware of the dangers involved in driving while distracted is an important part of road safety campaigning and the more that can be done to reduce this sort of dangerous driving behaviour, the safer our roads will be."