Woman's final text she sent while driving before fatal crash
A heartbroken mother has told of the last text message her daughter sent before she died in a fatal crash.
Vicki Richardson will join a NSW Government-led safety campaign, featuring the last text messages sent by fatal accident victims seconds before their deaths, aimed to stop people from texting behind the wheel, News Corp reports.
Mrs Richardson lost her 20-year-old daughter Brooke in an accident in December, 2012.
Brooke was travelling at about 100km/h on her way to work as a hairdresser in Cobram, on the New South Wales-Victoria border, when she decided to send a text.
“Are you still going to make it today?” she messaged a client.
Moments later, the 20-year-old crashed into a tree.
Brooke’s phone was found at her feet in the car. Mrs Richardson told Fairfax just days after Brooke’s death, from what she could gather from the coroner’s report, “she actually dropped the phone and she bent down” to pick it up “and swerved onto the wrong side of the road and hit a tree head on”.
“Brooke won’t have a wedding. All her girlfriends are having babies now,” Mrs Richardson told News Corp.
“I don’t want another parent to go through this.”
Mrs Richardson launched the “don’t-txt-n-drive” campaign and website in memory of her daughter. She’s also joined a Government-led ad campaign.
Data shows 71 people on NSW roads were seriously injured while driving and texting between 2008-2016 while another nine were killed.
But Roads Minister Melinda Pavey said the data doesn’t tell the whole story and “it’s worse than this”.
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She said one of the issues was the Government was “weak on the data” about phone usage at the time of accidents.
“I don’t think we know how bad it is,” she said.
Ms Pavey said access to phone records at a federal level was needed to understand more.
The usage of the text messages follows a technique used in the US to stop drivers from using a phone while behind the wheel. The NSW campaign launches this week and will run for two weeks.
Mrs Richardson said 12 months before her daughter’s accident a friend told her Brooke had been texting while driving. She warned Brooke to stop but the 20-year-old didn’t listen.
