Glasgow was notorious for knife crime when his family left Scotland and eventually put down roots in Canberra, Tom McLuckie says.
Like many immigrant families, they dreamed of a better life, an affordable home, the abundant outdoors, and a much safer city.
More than two decades later, Mr McLuckie says he cannot wait to "get away from this place".
The family's idyllic dream was sullied after a drug-addled, speeding driver crashed head-on into his son, Matthew's car on Hindmarsh Drive.
In an instant, Amanda, Tom and Sarah lost their 20-year-old boy, and Joseph lost his elder brother on May 20, 2022.
"It's very difficult living in Canberra, you're haunted here," the father says, speaking to The Canberra Times shortly after the fourth anniversary of Matthew's death.
Mr McLuckie avoided Hindmarsh Drive for a couple of years, but now drives past the crash site at least twice a week to go to work. He says his partner, Sarah, has to take the same route regularly on the way to her job.
"I coached Matt's soccer team ... there's not a single suburb in Canberra that's got an oval that sports played on [where] I want to be now," Mr McLuckie, who is working on exposure therapy with a psychologist, says.
"I don't think people realise that the criminal process is one thing and eventually it'll end, but the actual grief, the trauma, the memories from the grief, don't go away. They stay with you for a lifetime."
The other reason he wants to move away, potentially to the South Coast, is the "institutional betrayal" he experienced after his son's death.
"The justice system is all about mercy and therapeutic justice for the offenders, but they don't apply that equally for the victims," Mr McLuckie said.
After Matthew's death in 2022, an ACT inquiry into dangerous driving made 28 recommendations to the government to improve road safety but Mr McLuckie says, "Nothing's really changed".
It came after three Canberra families who had experienced losing blameless children to fatal crashes, together called for a review of the way repeat road offenders were sentenced in the territory.
The government accepted 11 recommendations, and agreed in principle to six, including reviewing dangerous driving sentences for any downward trends, considering renaming the "culpable driving causing death" offence to "vehicular manslaughter", and ensuring transparency for victims regarding the Alexander Maconochie Centre's transitional release program.
The government noted seven recommendations, including urgently funding a 24-hour hotline service to support victims and families at the scene of an accident, and disagreeing with a proposed solution to increase information sharing between the ACT Corrective Services and the Sentence Administration Board.
Instead, at the end of 2022, the government transferred the responsibility for administering the Victims Register entirely to Victim Support ACT (VSACT).
The remaining four recommendations were rejected, including giving the Sentence Administration Board authority to restrict or suspend driver licences as a parole condition, and introducing penalties for passengers who leave the scene of an accident.
"In our petition we called for those kind of wilful, dangerous, and potentially lethal behaviours to actually face some form of sentencing guide," Mr McLuckie says.
"But we've developed this culture of therapy for the offender, justice for the offender, and basically the victims, in many cases, are just meant to be bystanders and have no opinion, and the minute they do, they're accused of being emotional, biased, or uneducated about the law."
He says he was not surprised by continued reports of dangerous driving, including the incident last month on Tuggeranong Parkway when a Toyota Hilux allegedly drove on the wrong side of the road, causing three separate crashes and landing one person in hospital.
The father is further disheartened by the level of accountability for offenders saying the ACT tolerated reckless behaviour.
Having spoken to multiple families whose loved ones had been killed by dangerous drivers, Mr McLuckie says none felt the sentences for the offenders were reasonable.
Jailing is failing because instead of rehabilitating people, Canberra's jail is such a "shit show" that it creates more crime, he adds.
Not wanting to speak for the rest of his family, Mr McLuckie says he plans to leave the region after Matthew's coronial matter and the offender's appeal are finalised, to avoid a "torturous" retirement.
"I think if we'd have known how challenging the last four years were going to be, the government gaslighting and things like that, I don't think we'd have buried him here, I think we'd have him cremated," he says.
Mr McLuckie says he does not want to live anywhere near a city where offenders could get away with crime and the government offered sympathy but not legislative change.
"I am convinced that it's just a matter of time before another significant event, what happened to Matthew, will happen to someone else in some other family," Mr McLuckie says.
"I remember when the two young fellows got hit outside St Eddies, Tara Cheyne's, Marisa Paterson's [notices] of empathy ...
He adds: "It's actually offensive as a father who's listened to their statements defending the current system in the assembly when they come out making these bloody gestures of sympathy, because it means nothing if you're not prepared to change the system."
"I am done fighting because nothing's going to change. I've literally given up."
Corrections Minister Dr Marisa Paterson and Attorney-General Tara Cheyne were contacted for comment, they confirmed the number of recomendations the government agreed to but did not provide a response to Mr McLuckie's comments.
