They saw Mum's death as trivial

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When her mother was crushed by a lorry Maya Foa was appalled to see the driver fined only £300 and keep his licence. She tells why the law must change For Maya Foa, the image of her mother’s shattered body, the cycling helmet she always wore for protection crushed into her skull, is a memory that will never fade. Equally vivid is her anger at what she sees as a miscarriage of justice over her mother’s death – one of “too many” killings of cyclists by lorries, as the coroner said at the inquest. Emma Foa, 56, was thrown off her bike and crushed by a two-ton cement mixer lorry at a junction near King’s Cross in north London on the morning of December 21 last year. The driver was oblivious to her as he turned left, even though they had been stationary side by side for 38 seconds at the traffic lights and several witnesses honked and shouted as they saw what was happening. An inquest would later be told that he was sorting papers in his cab as he turned the corner. Maya, 23, a student at Oxford University, was down for the holidays when the police arrived at the family house in Hampstead, north London, with the news that there had been “a terrible accident”. Her stepfather, Reg Wright, collapsed when she telephoned him at his office with the news. Initially, they did not want to believe it. Maya recalled: “When Reg and I drove to the morgue we actually talked about how it was all a mistake, reassuring ourselves because Emma had been cycling for 20 years and was incredibly careful, saying we were going to bring her home.” Over the following months Maya, her sister Lia, 25, and Wright, 53, would learn how little value the law placed on the life of Foa, a jewellery maker and author. And they found themselves joining the relatives of similar victims in a campaign for changes in the law. Emma had been killed only four days before Christmas. “This delayed the funeral and the police could not interview the driver of the cement mixer until he returned from honeymoon,” Maya said. “It was surreal – and never more so than when the police liaison officer told me that there was no question of a manslaughter charge because the law is not about consequences but about intent.” Maya decided: “The only thing I could do was to try to make sure my mother’s life was honoured with proper justice.” She got all the information available from the police, viewed the CCTV footage of the accident and looked at photographs – including the one of her crushed mother. She read witness statements. “Being pro-active seemed the one way I might be able to have our case treated as a killing, not as a fatality.” To her dismay the driver, Michael Thorn, 52, was charged only with the minor offence of driving without due care and attention. Then at the initial pretrial hearing Thorn did not turn up. “We waited, but neither he nor the defence appeared. There was just a note saying he was pleading not guilty – he only changed his plea to guilty when he had seen the CCTV footage of what happened.”