Pete Allison<\/span> and<\/span><\/p>\n Peter Gillibrand<\/span>BBC Newsbeat<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Lottie, Sam and Rose are scrolling through their phones reminiscing about their friend, Aaron Bell.<\/p>\n “We were attached at the hip pretty much,” says Lottie.<\/p>\n “He was always my little buddy, my little bro.”<\/p>\n Sam remembers messing about at the gym or playing video game EA FC together, while his girlfriend, Rose, recalls how he showed her around his family’s farm.<\/p>\n As they flick through their albums, their photos together come to an abrupt end on 29 July 2022.<\/p>\n It was the day Aaron died in a car crash.<\/p>\n He was one of three passengers in an Alfa Romeo that smashed into a tree at “excessive speed”. <\/p>\n The driver, 18-year-old Joshua Chapman, survived and was jailed for causing the deaths<\/a> of Aaron, 18, Louis Banks, 17, and Tommy Shevels, 18.<\/p>\n “I just wanted to wake up. It felt like a horrible, horrible nightmare,” Lottie tells BBC Newsbeat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lottie’s one of the thousands in the UK who have lost a loved one in a crash.<\/p>\n The latest government figures show 1,602 people died in car crashes in England, Wales and Scotland last year. <\/p>\n Of those, 226 were aged 17-24.<\/p>\n In Northern Ireland, 13 people aged 16-24 died in similar circumstances.<\/p>\n The annual figure is still lower than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic, but numbers don’t tell the whole story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n PC Rich Clarke, a roads policing officer in North Yorkshire, is often the person who has to give someone “the worst news they’re ever going to get”.<\/p>\n That usually involves turning up at someone’s home.<\/p>\n “I know I’ve got to knock on that door,” he says.<\/p>\n “But sometimes I just find myself giving them two more minutes.”<\/p>\n In a case like Aaron’s, three families would have received a visit from PC Clarke or a colleague.<\/p>\n He says young people are “substantially more likely to be involved in a collision” during their first two years as a driver.<\/p>\n According to an expert at Cardiff University, around one in five newly qualified drivers crash within six months of getting their licence<\/a> – most are aged under 25.<\/p>\n The report also said that drivers aged 17 to 19 hold around 2% of driving licences in the UK, but are involved in 10 to 14% of crashes.<\/p>\n Aaron’s friend Sam tells Newsbeat young drivers can often feel peer pressure to show off or drive fast. <\/p>\n “You still have the responsibility of everyone else’s safety,” he says.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lottie says the crash that killed Aaron left her “terrified” and made her realise that a lot of younger drivers feel invincible.<\/p>\n “You think: ‘nothing’s going to happen to me. It always happens to someone else’,” she says.<\/p>\n “And that’s just not the truth.”<\/p>\n The friends believe more should be done to remind young people about responsible driving. <\/p>\n There is a national campaign to recognise the “fatal five” causes of road deaths<\/a>, including not wearing a seatbelt or using a mobile phone while driving.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In Northern Ireland, 207 people aged 16 to 24 were either killed or seriously injured in 2024.<\/p>\n There is a target to reduce that to 79 by 2030.<\/p>\n The country also had a graduated licensing scheme in place, where drivers have to display an R plate for one year after passing their test. <\/p>\n There had been plans to ban drivers under the age of 21 from carrying passengers of the same age for six months – but that hasn’t happened yet. <\/p>\n![\"BBC](\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/480\/cpsprodpb\/502a\/live\/94ed2a40-a03f-11f0-928c-71dbb8619e94.png.webp\")
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