>> Francesca's story
Doing something as simple as going for food can’t end in tragedy, can it?
For Francesca and 3 of her friends it did. Two of her friends lost their lives when they decided to go for a quick bite to eat with an inexperienced driver. Here she recalls the details of the horrific collision and how she felt having to go to her friend’s funerals.
Do you think you’re a good driver, have you gained enough experience and skills?
>> Transcript
I was seventeen at the time of the accident and the reason we were going out was because…just to get some food, so we were just simply going because we were all hungry and had a free period so we just decided to go that day.
It wasn't something that we always did. I'd only ever been in this person’s car up to the shop, which is two minutes down the road, because I didn’t really like going in other drivers’ cars anyway.
There was the driver, who was seventeen at the time. And then my other friend was in the passenger seat, who was seventeen at the time. Then behind him was my best friend, he was sixteen at the time. And then I was sitting behind the driver; I was seventeen at the time.
We were coming down a normal road, and it's two ways, and there was a junction to the left hand side of us. So when we were coming this way there was a junction here and there's a lorry coming the opposite way to us and I think it was actually stopped at the time that we came down. When we were on that road where the accident happened, that was the only other time I looked and it was at that point that I seen what was about to happen. And I'm not sure why I looked at that time but it’s probably lucky that I did because I had time to react to it.
When I looked round I could see the lorry was sort of, to me, looked like blocking the whole road so I don't think, I'm not sure if the driver of our car actually tried to brake or anything but I just know that he went to sort of swerve round the back of the lorry. As the lorry was moving he probably thought, oh, because that's moving that way I can just go across, round and miss it but it didn't actually make it to go round it so ended up hitting the back of the lorry and actually our car sort of went underneath and that's why the roof got taken off.
Before I even climbed out I kind of looked around me at everybody else because, I thought that it was, like to me it felt like, I’ve survived it, I thought everyone else would as well. And I thought everyone would be like, oh my gosh, shocked by it. And then when I, like, looked I realised that others were different to me. And I looked at my best friend next to me and I thought, no.
I thought I was imagining it or something. So I had to look again and then I realised what had happened to him. And then I got out, I was hysterical at that time. And then, the driver stepped out. He was sort of floating in and out of consciousness. I’m not sure. I don’t think he even knew what was going on. He doesn't remember getting out of the car or anything.
So when he got out of the car I could see the passenger because he was sort of blocking the view before he got out. And I realised at that time that he was obviously a lot worse off than me as well.
It seemed within a few minutes that the emergency services were there. The firemen came, covered over my other two friends in the car. By that time I sort of had an idea of what had happened to them. I had other peoples' blood and stuff on me so it looked like I was a lot worse off but when I actually got cleaned up and stuff there was just a few cuts on my legs and arms. But it's more mentally that I think it affected me.
I'd never actually been to a funeral before, before it was the two boys that were in the crash. So I was quite anxious about what it was going to be like because I didn't have any idea. They were both cremated so both times we went to the crematorium and when I had to leave there, of my best friend’s funeral, that was the hardest thing, probably, I've ever had to do. I just wanted to stay there with him and never leave.
It's hard to imagine that someone you've been close with for so long and they can just be taken away within a couple of minutes. One minute you're with them, the next minute you're not going to see them again. And that I had to be sort of dragged out because it was so hard to leave him because I knew that was the last time I was ever going to be with him.
