On Thursday 19 May, the McLuckie family suffered an indescribable, unimaginable, and irrevocable loss that forever shattered their lives.

Imagine waiting for your child to arrive home from work, but never hearing their car pull into your driveway – ever again. That’s Tom McLuckie’s reality, because of a young woman’s reckless driving. 

Not quite two months after his 20-year-old son Matthew’s tragic death while driving home from work, Tom is channelling his grief into making Canberra roads safer, to ensure the loss of Matt wasn’t in vain.

Creating the ACT Now For Safe Roads initiative, Tom is questioning what possible systemic failures led to his son’s death … and he’s going to keep asking until he gets some answers.  

Where Tom finds the will to create such an extensive and powerful campaign after such gut-wrenching grief might be unfathomable for many, but he says he’s keeping his word to Matt.

“I made a promise the day I buried Matt, and the trauma of that was quite profound, but I did make a promise to him that I was going to try and get him justice,” Tom says.

“My head is telling me I should stay in bed and not go out, but my heart is saying I need to do this for both my sons, the one we lost but also the one who’s still here.”

He’s been told he should put his activism aside and instead take the time to ‘grieve’ for his son, but Tom says grieving is multifaceted, and this is how he is choosing to do it.

“I have the rest of my life to grieve, that’s the thing, right. We have people messaging us that this happened to me decades ago, and they still grieve for them and experience the trauma every single day,” revealed Tom.

“It’s not going to go, so…

“We came across this quote by Rosie Batty, who also lost her son in a senseless and preventable crime:

‘Since Luke was killed, I have faced a fundamental choice: rage against the senselessness of his death, or channel that energy and try to make it count for something. Luke was too special not to leave a legacy, and I am determined to forge one for him’.”

In the same sense, Matt was too special to leave without systemic and significant change to Canberra’s driving legislation.

To lack a burning vengeance after such a life-altering trauma is a testament to Tom’s kind nature. He reflected that two lives were taken that night; although the young woman who was allegedly driving the car that collided head-on with his son is still alive.

Tom has obtained an audience with the ACT Chief Minister and the Attorney-General later this week, and is aiming to request an independent review of sentencing practices in the ACT Judiciary and considerations for legislative changes.

“I don’t think public safety should be part of a political standpoint. It’s common-sense decisions that are not based on politics to make our roads safer,” says Tom.

“We want this to be bipartisan, and we want these guys to sort it out because it makes common sense – that’s what we elect them for, right?

“It’s too important to Australians.”

A recent interview made Tom a target from car enthusiasts, and he wanted to set the record straight that he isn’t coming for the Canberra car community.

He says he’d be the first person to put his name on a petition for Canberra to build a raceway or racetrack, because there needs to be a proper place for people who want to put their foot down and hit top speeds.

“I took my son to Bathurst when he was learning to drive. If I didn’t like cars, I wouldn’t have done that,” Tom says.

“I’ve got nothing against people who like cars, motorsports, or anything like that, but I do think we need to have our young people realise there are consequences to driving like an idiot and I think we do need a campaign.

“If people who have been in those situations, that have done prison time or done community time because they did kill a loved one in a car crash, then I think it would get a very powerful message out there.”

The ACT Now For Safe Roads campaign is pushing for the need for a national ‘sentencing guideline’, more police presence within the ACT, and a review into the ‘rehabilitation’ programs that exist for criminal offenders.  

Within just a week, Tom’s Facebook page has gained over 7000 followers, with hundreds of Canberrans reaching out to share their harrowing stories of losing a loved one on the road.

He says the community deserves to know to the extent to which Canberra’s rehabilitation services are successful, the amount of funding they receive, and the percentage of the people who receive reduced sentences for road offences that attend these services.

“What percentages of people who reoffend go through the program? If they have a genuine impact and make a difference, then fantastic. We’d be happy for the review to come back and say it’s all good,” says Tom.

“If they could say, ‘here’s the evidence of the rehab programs, here’s how much we’re funding it, and then here are the results of the rehab programs, and these people were put back in the community and didn’t offend again’, we’d happily hear that.

“But we don’t actually feel that’s happening.”

Tom stresses that he’s not targeting small, accidental road incidents; he just wants to see an end to people repeatedly and purposefully driving dangerously and walking away without adequate consequences.

“I’ve had speeding tickets, every single one of us has sped, every one of us has had two glasses of wine and thought you’re fine to drive. We’re not targeting people like that,” says Tom.

“That’s not what this campaign is. I do think the judiciary have the right to make judgement calls, but the purposeful and wilful repeat offenders … that’s where something absolutely needs to be done.

“I think it would be beneficial, as part of a rehabilitation program, for people to hear from people who have lost loved ones, and we’d be willing to do it, too.”

As much as Tom is working to get justice for Matt, he’s also doing this for his younger son, who he desperately wants to protect on Canberra’s roads.

“It’s a challenge for us, and I think the underlying thing is wanting to wrap our other son up in cottonwool,” Tom says.

“But realistically, he’s a 16-year-old boy and he deserves the right for this not to define his life.

“He deserves the right, like lots of kids, to go and get his driver’s licence, get his P’s, get a car, have a part-time job, go on a Maccas run.

“Matt and his friends would go on Maccas runs all the time.”

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