The images enter my sleep, and trouble me awake. A speeding car cannonballs across a wet road, flips and smashes head-on into a female cyclist riding home. This is no Netflix horror show. This was a residential street in Hackney on September 21 last year.
Gathered from council CCTV footage, this deeply distressing film was shown in evidence to Court 12 at Snaresbrook Crown Court last Friday. The packed, overheated room was silent but for horrified gasps and sobs from about a dozen of the cyclist’s family and close friends.
This was how the life of Gao Gao, by all accounts a quite remarkable young Londoner and devoted mother to two terribly young children, ended.
Gao Gao’s family and friends had gathered expecting to see the ill-educated 29-year-old man who had pleaded guilty to causing her death by dangerous driving sent to prison.
In 30 years as a journalist, the victim impact statements are as distressing as anything I’ve heard
Instead, they had to wait as he claimed in court that when he fled the overturned car with his father, he was unaware that a woman was dying less than 20ft away.
Somehow her widower, Luke Walker, and her sister Ella found the courage to read out their victim impact statements. They told how many lives had been torn apart, not least those of her four-year-old boy and his one-year-old sister, who will grow up motherless.
The little girl, who was still being breastfed, now goes to her front door daily to plead for her “mama” to return. In 30 years as a journalist, it’s as distressing as anything I’ve heard.
This is the reality of what happens daily on London’s roads. As a cyclist, it’s terrifying. As a parent, doubly so. The selfish lack of regard for other road users runs directly from those who rush red lights or ignore pedestrians on zebra crossings to those who, like Gao Gao’s killer, drive at nearly 50mph in a 20mph zone. Hit-and-runs are soaring. Speeding is at epidemic levels: a million tickets may be issued this year. The so-called “war on the motorist” — LTNs, Ulez and speed cameras — is anything but.
But it has inspired the deadliest of vengeance against vulnerable road users. Protected by airbags in ridiculously fast, often unregistered and uninsured cars, many drivers think nothing of the consequences as they turn London into a lawless racetrack.
But those in Court 12 know the consequences. The horror of Gao Gao’s last moments cannot be unseen.
