Man who lost partner in crash backs new safety fund

A man whose partner and unborn child were killed by a dangerous driver have welcomed a new £1m fund to improve road safety.

Calvin Buckley's partner Frankie Jules-Hough died when she was hit by a motorist who was filming himself with his phone while driving at 123mph on the M66 in May 2023.

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has launched a fund aimed at reducing fatalities and life-changing injuries.

Mr Buckley said the cash could help "a lot of people and projects out there that need funding so they can make a difference and start saving lives".

Mr Buckley is now a road safety campaigner, and said he wants to help save lives "in the name of my partner and unborn child".

He is in the process of trying to set up his own road safety academy, an ambition he said "is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning".

"If I wasn't campaigning, I wouldn't have a life. Everything that I'd been working for, my dreams, all went in an instant."

The GMCA fund is open to partners of the Safer Roads Greater Manchester Partnership and can be used on engineering, education, training or enforcement projects.

Kate Green, the region's deputy mayor, said she is looking for a range of ideas.

"We've already got Community Speed Watch for example, where people use devices to spot the speed, grab the number plate and feed the information in to the police," she said.

Dame Sarah Store is now the Active Travel Commissioner for Greater Manchester.

Speaking at the fund was unveiled, the Paralympian said she will never forget "that feeling of terror" when she was hit by a car while riding her bike near Westhoughton in 2006.

"The car bonnet hit my left hip and I was powerless to stop it flinging me across the roundabout", he said.

The combined authority has endorsed a road safety improvement target called Vison Zero, which aims to eliminate road deaths and life-changing injuries by 2040.

In 2023, 45 people lost their lives and 754 were seriously injured on roads across Greater Manchester. In 2003, the number of fatalities in the region was 126.

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