A NATIONAL road safety charity has thrown its weight behind The Bolton News’ Drive For Justice campaign.

The campaign was launched with the aim of seeing tougher sentences introduced for dangerous drivers who cause serious injury.

Now RoadPeace, the national charity for road crash victims, has joined in the fight to take the issue all the way to the top.

Amy Aeron-Thomas, Executive Director of RoadPeace, said that on the day Drive for Justice was launched the charity held a conference on improving the post crash response with presentations about collision investigation, criminal prosecution, compensation, and trauma care.

Miss Aeron-Thomas said: “In the charity’s first 17 years its main campaign was to get death and serious injury mentioned in motoring charges. It was only in August 2008 that the new causing death by careless driving charge came in. We were unsuccessful at getting the offences to mention injury but have recently raised this with the office of the new Commission for Victims and Witnesses.”

“Do not forget that because there is no mention of injury in the charges of careless or dangerous driving, or speeding or drink driving, that we do not know how many innocent victims are hurt by law breaking drivers and are thus left out of the victims of crime statistics.”

The campaign was launched last week after Bolton Crown Court Judge Steven Everett slammed the law which only allowed him to jail dangerous driver Christopher Marr for 26 months.

Devon Foster, aged 14, Jacob Fear, aged 15, and George Coleman, aged 16, all suffered horrific injuries after the car Marr was driving went out of control, mounted the pavement in Darwen Road, Bromley Cross, and hit them as they were walking home in the early hours of August 22