Family of young woman killed by truck driver fight for law change

Preventable deaths on our roads deserve stronger accountability - that's the message from a family grieving the loss of a daughter and her unborn child.Jade Evans, 18, was killed near Palmerston North in November last year when a truck driver drove through a stop sign.The driver pleaded guilty to careless driving causing death, and was sentenced to two months' community detention. He also lost his licence for 12 months and must pay reparations of $8000 to the family.The maximum sentence possible under the law is three months' imprisonment. But Jade's mother, Kathryn Stothers, says that does not reflect the seriousness of the driver's deliberate - and fatal - choice.She told Checkpoint on Wednesday the next part of the family's healing process was an initiative called Jade's Law."Jade's story has shown us that a preventable road death has devastating consequences for us as an entire family and also in the community, so we really want to turn that loss into meaningful change and make New Zealand roads safer."She said at present, the law does not differentiate between genuine mistakes and deliberate decisions."The level of accountability is just the same if there was an accident that resulted because of water on the road or sunstrike, or anything like that. There's no deterrence for somebody that has deliberately breached road rules."On 18 November, Jade was on her way to her parents' for dinner. The truck driver "looked left and right and continued to drive through" a stop sign, Stothers said."The truck driver has collided with our daughter Jade, and upon impact she's received devastating brain injuries and lost consciousness instantly and never regained it again."Stothers said police and the courts did "everything they can" to hold the driver accountable, but the law did not differentiate between careless driving causing injury, and careless driving causing death."This is why we're pushing for stronger accountability to close the legislation gap. There's a gap in our current law when a fundamental road rule is broken and someone loses their life. This is to strengthen deterrence and restore public confidence that the law reflects the seriousness of a life lost."We don't want to make it that every single offence is charged at a higher charge. What we're asking for is to have more of a tiering section in the law so that the police and the court can charge appropriately when something like death occurs, because there's been a breach of a fundamental road law. We're not trying to take away from genuine accidents."Stothers said Jade was a "strong, young, energetic, enthusiastic person" and her death left a hole in their lives."What we want to prevent is for other families to be in our situation where we're looking across the dining room table where there's a person missing. We want to reduce the possibility of other families sitting in the place we have, because it's a terrible place to sit."As of Wednesday, nearly 700 people had signed a formal petition to the government on Jade's Law.