The widow of a 'keen astronomer' who was killed on a smart motorway has sent his ashes into space. Claire Mercer, who has been campaigning for the roads to be banned since husband Jason's death four years ago, says he would have 'loved' the send off.
Jason, 44, died alongside Alexandru Murgeanua, 22, after they were hit by a lorry on a stretch of the M1 which doesn't have a hard shoulder. They had stopped in the left-hand lane to exchange insurance details in June 2019 following a minor collision near Sheffield, South Yorks.
Lorry driver Prezemyslaw Zbigniew Szuba was jailed for ten months after admitting two counts of causing death by driving without due care and attention. Claire, 47, said: "Jason was a keen astronomer and had a very large telescope in the garden and had a life feed from Nasa running to his computer.
"It was his screensaver so the computer was always displaying the latest images. Originally I said I would have released them when we've won the campaign but it's taking so much longer.
"It just started to feel odd keeping his ashes that long when I knew I didn't plan to keep them. He definitely would have loved the idea.
"I'm four years down the line now and I know he's dead and that he's never coming back now. But what choked me was, is that he had to die to get the trip into space and he would have loved it while he was alive.
"It's just amazing to think he went all the way up there."
The government announced in April that plans to build 14 new smart motorways had been cancelled over 'the current lack of public confidence felt by drivers.' Claire said she thinks the announcement was a 'massive climbdown for the government' and doesn't see 'how they can justify' keeping the roads.
She has also vowed that she will keep campaigning with group Smart Motorways Kill until the government 'give in completely.' Claire, added: "I really feel the fact that they aren't going to make anymore smart motorways is a massive climbdown for the government.
"I don't see how they can justify keeping existing ones if they are saying new ones are too dangerous. I'm really hoping they give in soon and accept they've got to give in completely.
"I'm not going to stop until they do and I'm just hoping they might give in sooner rather than later. At the moment, there is just inquest after inquest going on and death after death."
Eight months before the fatal collision, Nargis Begum, 62, died on the M1 near Woodall Services in South Yorks,. before the car she was a passenger in, broke down. Nargis and her husband Mohammed Bashir, 69, waited for help by their Nissan Qashqai for around 17 minutes before another vehicle collided with it.
At an inquest in September last year, Coroner Nicola Mundy ruled that the lack of a hard shoulder had contributed to Nargis' death. At Jason and Alexandru's inquests in January 2021, Coroner David Urpeth also said their deaths could have been avoided if there had been a hard shoulder.
