Family of grandmother killed on smart motorway in Yorkshire ready for 'answers we deserve'

Nargis Begum died in a collision on a stretch of the M1 near Sheffield which had no hard shoulder, in September 2018, after the Nissan Qashqai she was a passenger in broke down.ai

The 62-year-old and her husband Mohammed Bashir, 69, who had been driving, waited for help outside the car for around 17 minutes before another vehicle collided with it.

The grandmother from Sheffield was hit by her car and killed and an inquest examining the circumstances surrounding her death, held at Doncaster Coroner’s Court, is due to begin on Tuesday, September 6.

Saima Aktar, 40, had driven to the scene to help her parents, after they broke down near Woodall services on September 9, but arrived after the collision.

“The pain and suffering our family are going through is as raw now as it was when mum died,” she said.

“She was the most kind, gentle and loving person you could wish to meet. Mum’s life revolved around family and all she wanted for us was health and happiness; something we’ve struggled to feel since her death.

“Our dad is a shadow of himself. He avoided injury but his loving and caring wife of 45 years died in front of him, it has taken its toll on him.

“While it’s four years since her death time has stood still for our family. Trying to grieve for mum has been made all the harder because of the concerns we have about smart motorways and the events surrounding mum’s death.

“We know the inquest and listening to the evidence is going to be traumatic but it’s something we need in order to get some of the answers we deserve.”

After a pre-inquest review hearing last year, Coroner Nicola Mundy referred National Highways, then known as Highways England, to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider if corporate manslaughter charges were appropriate.

It came after Sheffield coroner David Urpeth ruled that Jason Mercer, 44, and Alexandru Murgeanu, 22, who died in a lorry crash after they stopped on a different stretch of the motorway in June 2019, had been unlawfully killed and said "a lack of hard shoulder contributed to this tragedy”.

South Yorkshire Police then conducted a scoping exercise, but announced in February that National Highways “cannot be held liable” because it “did not owe road users a relevant duty of care” under the terms of the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.

Lawyers at Irwin Mitchell, who are representing the family of Mrs Begum, have launched a civil case against National Highways on their behalf.

They are also working with Claire Mercer, the widow of Jason Mercer, and looking to bring a judicial review against the government-owned company, calling for the hard shoulder to be reinstated on all smart motorways.

In January, the Department for Transport said it would halt the roll out of smart motorways until five years’ worth of data has been collected for safety assesments.