Professional Recovery 375

RECOVERYINSIDER
With the IVR AGM approaching and at very short notice I
contacted Meera and asked if she would speak at this year’s AGM.
Without a moment’s consideration she accepted the invitation.
However, speaking on a Saturday was not something she ever did,
her family commitments are too important.
She was however prepared to make an exception and by
her own admission she had never addressed an audience of
recovery operators. It was an audience that would be able to both
understand and connect with what had happened that tragic night
in May 2018. Most of the audience would have some experience
of dealing with roadside collisions, and the majority in the room
would, like me, know about Meera and what her and her family had
since been through. It made the whole event much more nervewracking.
A couple of hours before the AGM, I met with Meera and we
discussed at length her presentation. This was so she could
connect with the audience. She wanted to be open and honest
and would be speaking of Dev’s death – always a difficult subject,
no matter what circumstances.
She opened up to me about how she had struggled with PTSD,
how in the aftermath of what happened - her mind and body shut
down. She now struggles with memory loss, and at one point had
to learn to read again.
The only way she found to move on was to accept what had
happened, as she couldn’t change the past. But what she could do
was make a change to the future, through campaigning for roadside
safety.
Welcomed to the rostrum:
Meera Naran MBE is an independent road safety campaigner and
public speaker helping to ensure we have safer drivers on safer
roads.
In May 2018 she lost her eight-year-old son Dev in a smart
motorway collision on the M6. Since that time, she has successfully
campaigned for the adoption of 18 national policy changes with a
commitment from the Department for Transport to spend over
£900m including changes to the Highway Code and on-going driver
education.
Among her many campaign successes has been the decision by
the Department for Transport to pause the smart motorway rollout
until five years of safety data is available. She is also currently
lobbying for a change in legislation to implement life-saving
technology such as autonomous emergency braking, proposed as
Dev’s Law, and continues to work to ensure that no one else goes
through the pain of losing a loved one in the way she and her family
did. She is also a Trustee of the road safety charity, Brake.
Meera is also a qualified Pharmacist and a Senior Lecturer in Post
Graduate Clinical Pharmacy at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Meera’s campaign is based on the safe system approach and
systems thinking with the road user at the very centre of decision
making, using parallel models from aviation, health and other
sectors. Her ongoing efforts to influence policy and change,
encompasses the value of on-going education and collaboration
across the industry and other sectors. “There is so much we can
learn and develop alongside different sectors in terms of policy,
growth and safety, she says.
Meera still remembers the moment when she decided she
needed to begin campaigning in Dev’s memory.
“Sitting at Dev’s inquest was unbearably painful,” she says.
“It was two weeks after what would have been his tenth birthday
and two weeks before my daughter was born. I was a broken
mother that day. At that moment, all I could think was ‘what are the
lessons to be learned here? And how do we make what we have
safer?’
My campaign, Safer Drivers on Safer Roads began three days
before my daughter was born. Campaigning with a new born baby,
and managing my son Neel who is palliative with complex health
needs, was a challenge. But it’s a challenge that, to this day, I
continue to accept.
Grief is all-consuming . . . and it is devastating. If allowed, it
can consume you. But I have always believed in turning that into
“We all go through challenges
every day and we never really
know what another person is
going through. That is why it’s
so important to be kind and
support one another where
we can.”
something positive by helping to save the lives of others. That’s
what keeps me going. My campaigning voice has been motivated
by all the unspent love I have for Dev. If he was here, he would be
getting all that love; it would be his. But instead, I am pouring it into
my work in road safety.
Without Dev, I have to try even harder, but harder will never
mean impossible and I continue to live with love in my heart and
a passion to make changes to improve road safety. And until we
achieve zero deaths on any roads, I will not be able to say that I
have succeeded. I want to ensure other children get home safely to
their parents.
10 PROFESSIONAL RECOVERY MAGAZINE
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