A YORK woman who lost her best friend in a crash - and also broke both her own legs - has thrown her support behind a charity’s campaign to tackle speeding.

Rachel McGuigan, speaking during the launch of Brake’s Road Safety Week campaign, ‘Speed Down Save Lives,’ says she doesn’t want other families to go through the suffering hers experienced.

She said breaking the speed limit meant it took longer to react and brake in an emergency, increasing the chance of causing death and serious injury.

“Speeding is really dangerous and so I’m fully supporting this year’s Road Safety Week and encouraging everyone to speed down to save lives,” she said.

Rachel, now 28, from the Boroughbridge Road area, was a passenger in a car which crashed into a tree in Scarborough in September 2007, killing her friend Alex Pickering, of Ridgeway, Acomb and leaving the car’s driver, David Hartley, with life changing injuries, unable to walk and talk, while Rachel broke both legs and a knee. An inquest later heard how the Ford Focus had gone round a sharp bend and hit a kerb at about 50mph in a 30mph zone.

Rachel fought through severe leg pain to walk a Marathon route through London in the summer to raise thousands of pounds for the road safety charity Brake and she said her employer, Bradshaws Direct, had now agreed to donate 50p to Brake from every sale during road safety week

A Brake spokesman said it was calling for a default 20mph limit in all built-up areas and increased enforcement of speed limits.

It also wanted ‘Intelligent Speed Adaptation’, which helps drivers stay within the limit, to be fitted as standard to new vehicles.

Campaigns director Jason Wakeford said speeding was a factor in many deadly crashes.