Speeding victim's mum campaigns against boy racers

"My senses have heightened to the sound of speeding cars - the amount of speeding cars that have been coming through our village has just got beyond a joke."

Emma Simmons, from Cookham, Berkshire, lost her 13-year-old son Max after he was hit walking down a road in Maidenhead in 2019.

Thames Valley Police said it was cracking down on speeding - or boy racers - in the village and that police community support officers would spend as much time as possible there to resolve the issue.

Emma has started a fundraising campaign to produce banners and signs to help deter reckless drivers and said more speed humps were needed in the village.

She describes her son, who would have turned 20 on Sunday, as "an active 13-year-old, looking forward to being an adult".

"He was sadly taken from us due to somebody else's careless actions."

In her campaign message, she says she lost Max four days before Christmas 2019 to "a speeding drug driver, that was five times over the legal limit for cocaine and doing nearly 70 in a 40 zone".

"This past summer the amount of speeding cars that have been coming through our village, using our village as a racetrack, has just got beyond a joke.

"It has brought it to my attention that we have very little speed signage in our village and we do need more."

Emma said she had bought and produced her own banners "just to make people aware - it does slow people down to read them".

She said if speed humps saved a child's life, "I'm very much up for it being outside my house".

TVP said it remained "committed to working with local communities and partner agencies to tackle speeding".

"Our enforcement activity is intelligence-led and focused on locations where there is the greatest risk of collisions resulting in death or serious injury," it said in a statement.

Luke Jenkins, the neighbourhood sergeant for Maidenhead, said that this week their safety camera team had been deployed to "various sites in Cookham that have been nominated by the public".

He said he was aware of Emma's campaign and hoped people would see the signs.

"And instead of seeing a speed limit they will see the human tragedy by what's happened and it will urge them to think again about what they're doing."

Ch Insp Stewart Codling said the force was working with the Royal Borough on decisions around where speed limits would be made.

"We'll also work with Max's mother and family because messages that they can add to this are in some cases way more powerful than a number of signs with digits on the side of the road," he said.

Emma said she felt what had been done in the week "has been great but it needs to be done more often".

In September, Cookham residents discussed speeding on a public meeting, saying it "all links to the boy races as well and it's happening at all hours of the day".

Ollie Odell, who has lived in the village all his life and used to race his car around the area, said he had "lost three friends in three years to fatal accidents, all being at not the fault of their own".

"It's a lot of young people who are 17, 18, just got their licence and they'll use Cookham either as a racetrack or a rat run.

"It's not just teenagers, it's general commuters who push it down the high street or ... a very, very small or thin road and it's not designed for people going over 15, 20mph".