Pauline Fielding MBE

On Midsummer’s Day in 1994, our 18-year-old son, Andrew, borrowed our car to travel to a football tournament in which he was playing. A car travelling in the opposite direction to him, cut across his path, causing him to break and swerve.  

In doing so, he hit the car travelling behind the car which turned and he was killed instantly. The car which caused the crash stopped initially, but then sped off and was never traced. That day changed my life and that of so many others, forever!

We had always recognised that the junction where this happened was dangerous and we had avoided turning there. We decided to campaign to make the junction safer to help prevent further death and injury.

It took five years of campaigning before the council reduced the speed limit from 60 to 40 mph, and now, decades later, we are still waiting for the installation of traffic lights at the junction where Andrew died.

I was supported well by my family and the community, but in particular by Brigitte Chaudhry MBE and RoadPeace, who generously gave me practical and emotional support.

I was invited to a RoadPeace remembrance service, where I met Margaret Highton, a bereaved grandmother, and together we started RoadPeace North West. We were supported in this by Merseyside Police, who offered us a meeting place. The links we have with the force have been mutually beneficial.

RoadPeace North West holds bi-monthly evening meetings and monthly support meetings too, as well as two remembrance services each year in Liverpool Cathedral and St George’s Hall. The support we give each other is very special and our members are like a second family.

I have been a RoadPeace trustee for many years and I am a member of the Merseyside Independent Advisory Group, representing road crash victims. I liaise with the Police, the PCC, Merseyside Road Safety Partnership, with local and national government and other partners, to help bring forward the day when we achieve Vision Zero and there will be no preventable deaths or injuries on our roads.

Pauline sadly passed away in 2023.