'Adopting Dev's Law will save other families pain'

A mother whose eight-year-old son was killed in a motorway crash has welcomed a new road safety strategy announced by the government.

Dev Naran, from Leicester, died in May 2018 when his grandfather's car was struck by a lorry on the hard shoulder of the M6 in Birmingham which was being used by moving traffic.

Since then his mother Meera Naran has been campaigning for Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) to be made compulsory in new vehicles.

She said the news it had been included in a raft of new safety measures announced by the government was "a huge leap forward".

The wide-ranging strategy also proposes changes to testing, mandatory eye tests for older drivers and new restrictions on drink-driving.

AEB monitors the road ahead and automatically slows down the vehicle if the driver does not respond to a potential collision.

Naran believes the technology would have prevented her son's death and has spent more than six years calling for it to be made compulsory on new vehicles under the campaign banner Dev's Law.

Now the Department for Transport says it is among 18 new technologies it plans to make mandatory, with the list also including lane-keeping assistance.

She said: "I am especially grateful to the secretary of state for giving me her word that she would honour Dev and recognise the importance of legislative change to adopt the General Safety Regulations, as Dev's Law, and for delivering on that commitment.

"I look forward to working closely with the department to ensure that the appropriate steps are taken to establish a robust and effective framework."

Speaking to BBC Radio Leicester on Wednesday, Naran added: "I feel so overwhelmed. This is such a huge leap forward in road safety - the first we've seen in over a decade.

"To see Dev's Law come to life in the way it has, it does mean so much but honestly, this is bigger than Dev, this is bigger than our story, it's bigger than me.

"This is a future where families will not have to go through this tragedy and won't have to go through this pain.

"For me that means more than anything."

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