A MOTHER who lost her 31-year-old son in a road traffic collision in 2019 has taken her campaign to ban the publication of images from crash scenes to the next level with the launch of a petition.
Karen Speers’ son Alan was killed when the van he was driving was involved in a collision close to Crumlin a week before Christmas in 2019.
At the time, the PSNI advised Karen not to seek out images from the scene. However, that afternoon a newspaper published an image of the car on their social media pages.
Ms Speers previously spoke to the Andersonstown News about the trauma of seeing images from the collision and the impact that it had on her.
Detailing how she felt when she saw the image, Karen said: “I was distraught. The police told me not to look for images from the scene and I couldn’t go and identify my son’s body because of the impact that could have on my mental health.
“These images don’t add anything to the story. People forget about it in a day or two but for us families, those images stay in our head,” she added.
“This kind of media coverage may get the maximum clicks these sites are looking for but they are just bringing more pain to the families who are already going through the worst pain imaginable.
“I don’t want other mothers to have to look at pictures of their loved one's damaged vehicles like I had to during that devastating time.
“I want to highlight the urgency to the media outlets to stop including photos of vehicles involved in road traffic collisions, whether fatal or not. They must realise that they are contributing to the families suffering at the cost of a few more clicks or sales,” she said.
Karen’s petition can be found on Change.org.
