Image supplied by family and used with permission.
The legacy of Dr Rebecca Mullen who was killed in the Hunter Valley Bus Crash, is being honoured by her family’s push to make seatbelts mandatory across the country.
Matt, Rebecca’s father, is part of the private taskforce STOP Bus Tragedies who have a seven-point plan to push to get seatbelts on every vehicle in Australia that’s on the road and ensure people wear them.
Rebecca was one of ten people who were killed when the bus they were on crashed on Wine Country Drive on the way home from a wedding on June 11.
The taskforce launched a petition several weeks ago, calling for the mandatory installation and enforcement for wearing seatbelts.
It’s garnered more than 5,700 signatures so far.
“The petition’s aim is to mandate that all buses should have seatbelts and people must wear them. Currently with the legislation that is not the case, there are a lot of little finer points to it,” Matt said.
“The STOP Bus tragedies group is aimed at general safety in buses so this is the first step, a critical and important step, but along the way each step will aim at improving bus safety standards full stop to bring us up to scratch with other countries around the world.”
Matt said it has been very confronting for him and his family as well as several other families involved, but they couldn’t do nothing.
“It’s personally very confronting for me, the concept of almost leveraging my beautiful daughter’s death to try and get some public awareness. But, one of my family member’s pointed out to me and asked me, ‘what would Bec want you to do?’ and it was a no brainer. She would definitely want us to promote bus safety, seatbelts, it it could save one child on a school bus in Australia that’s what she would want.
“Not one single person on that bus wasn’t wonderful, if their legacy can improve this and help the children of the future then that is what we want.”
Matt is pleading with everyone to sign the petition to give it the best change of helping make some positive, life changing impact.
“Some petitions are confusing, you might not know what they mean. You’re not exactly sure what you’re signing up for. This one is really simple, out there are buses tearing along at 100km/hr with school children with no seatbelts. Buses are statistically one of the safest forms of transport in the world and accidents do happen, so its not a matter of if, its a matter of when.
“It’s really simple, its just about keeping our children safe.”
You have until just before midnight on August 31 to sign the petition: https://www.aph.gov.au/e-petitions/petition/EN5237