A COUPLE whose pregnant daughter was killed in a lorry smash are bringing their road safety campaign to Manchester.

Anthony and Barbara Ward are pushing for a change in the law on motoring offences after Rachel, 19, was killed on the M6.

The teenager's car was forced off the road when a Dutch lorry driver changed lanes without seeing her.

He admitted careless driving and was fined £1,000 and given six points on a British road licence - but they do not transfer to his Dutch licence.

Rachel's parents say they have not had justice for their daughter, who was nine weeks' pregnant, and are campaigning for a new charge of causing death by careless driving. The charge, which would carry a jail sentence of up to five years, has been approved by Parliament, but is not yet law.

The couple, from Bedworth, near Coventry, have already gathered more than 25,000 signatures of support, with 6,000 of them going to the prime minister at Christmas.

They are hoping to bring the total up to one million by the summer and are calling on the people of Manchester to help.

Bus driver Mr Ward, 54, said: "Because he was not British, this driver was able to walk away from the case barely affected.

Campaign

"We plan to take the campaign to major cities and will be in Manchester within the month. We're not asking for any money, just signatures, support and justice."

Their plight was highlighted on ITV's Tonight investigation, Killer Lorries.

The programme examined the risk associated with left-hand drive lorries on British roads where the drivers have blind spots wide enough to hide a family saloon car, according to vehicle inspectorate VOSA.

They are also four times more likely than their British counterparts to be driving while tired, but cannot be properly sanctioned by British law, the investigation said.

There were more than 400 `side swipe' incidents - such as that in which Rachel was killed - in 2006, according to the Department for Transport. Local police forces said they were not aware of a significant number in the Greater Manchester, Cheshire or Lancashire areas.

A government spokesman said they were `taking concerted action to tackle unsafe foreign trucks' and said they had given VOSA funding to double the number of enforcement checks on vehicles.

He added that they were `introducing more effective penalty regimes to deter offenders', with measures to issue drivers with on-the-spot fines and hand out special lenses, which give a wider field of vision, at some of the country's ports.

What do you think? Have your say.