OUR recent talk of horrific 1960s road crashes coincided with Neville Fawcett visiting his home town of Darlington from France. He picked up The Northern Echo and in its Memories supplement saw how the Echo had controversially put graphic pictures of car crashes on its front page, like the one pictured above, in a bid to change safety laws.

“I’m 71 now, but back then I had a morning paper round in Darlington,” says Neville. “Inbetween addresses I would read the papers and I remember seeing a photo on one front page in the early 1960s of a badly damaged car, two men killed, at Coatham Mundeville. I recognised the car – a Wolseley 1500 – and the registration number – it began WWP – as my father’s.

“As I had got up early, I hadn’t seen my parents since the evening before, so I rushed home, and my father and mother were still in bed, completely unaware of the crash.

“My father had given the keys to someone to repair it, he had taken it to Newcastle and crashed on the way back.”