A82:Make it Safe campaign hears from sister of family killed in accident, ‘This road is killing families'
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Sadness soon replaced denial for sisters after their brother and his family died in a car accident on the A82 earlier this year.
Backing the A82: Make it Safe campaign, Jamielee King said no one else should get a phone call in the middle of the night to say someone has died.
She is the eldest sister of Rhys Cousin (25), who died alongside his wife Gemma (26) and their daughters Peyton (3) and Heidi (1) on February 20.
Ms King, from South Kessock, wants the Scottish Government to look seriously at its lack of safety measures on the road, something she said was “literally killing families”.
Ms King said: “When my mum phoned me at 2am in the morning to tell me that Rhys, Gemma, Peyton and Heidi were dead I thought she was joking.
“My mum was hysterical.
“I said to her ‘mum, that is not a nice thing to be joking about’.
“But I am so sad to say she wasn’t joking,”
Ms King explained that she then had to go to her sister Vikki’s house to tell her.
“When I told her, she was telling me that she did not believe me, that I was lying, and she started phoning Rhys.”
Ms King explained that no one could understand what had happened. “It was too much for anyone to take in.
“We lost all these people who were so precious to us.”
Days after the accident, Ms King and other members of the family went to the site of the accident near Fort William.
“You would not understand the pain of what that was like – no one would,” she said.
“The car had been in a ditch, and the policeman who was with us helped us through the worst part. “
But seeing where the accident happened has made Ms King feel stronger about making the A82 a safer place for people.
“You could see that the edge of the road was very wet and soft,” she recalled. “Anyone going near it could have gone into it.”
Data shows there were 18 fatalities on the A82 between January 2017 and summer 2019. There were two more last month, with John Hugh Mackenzie (66), from Fort William, being the most recent after his Citroen Berlingo collided with a lorry near Glengloy on October 26.
Ms King added: “Every single time someone has been in an accident on the road since, and more so for my mum, we feel that we have not done enough, that we should do more.
“There are still so many accidents. The road is literally killing people.
“You would think that after our tragedy something would have been done.”
To sign the petition visit http://tiny.cc/A82makeitsafe
