Rochdale MP Paul Waugh has joined dozens of parliamentary colleagues in demanding urgent changes to the law on medical reporting to the DVLA, following the tragic death of Anne Ferguson in Whitworth in 2023.

In a letter to the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander MP, the cross-party group of MPs backed a campaign led by Susan Rimaitas, whose mother Marie Cunningham and friend Grace Foulds were killed in Southport by a driver with a known visual impairment who failed to report it to the DVLA.

Paul Waugh MP highlighted the case of 75-year-old Anne Ferguson, who was killed by 72-year-old Vernon Law on a Rochdale road. Law had been diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes a month before the fatal collision but lied to an optometrist about being a driver and failed to disclose his sight issues on multiple DVLA licence applications. He was later jailed for four years.

Paul Waugh MP said:

“We have seen in Rochdale the devastating consequences of the current law. Mrs Ferguson’s death was entirely avoidable — and yet she is one of many victims of a broken system.

I fully support this campaign, and I commend Mrs Rimaitas for her determination to stop other families suffering as hers has. The law must be changed so that medical professionals are required to report unsafe drivers, and authorities are properly empowered to act.”

Currently, there is no mandatory legal requirement for optometrists to notify the DVLA when a patient is unfit to drive due to visual impairment — unless they judge it to be in the public interest. There is also no central system allowing such safety-critical information to be shared with police or included in driver databases.

The campaign calls for:

• Mandatory reporting by medical professionals when patients are unsafe to drive
• Creation of a system to share such reports with the DVLA and police
• Stronger checks to ensure visually impaired drivers cannot retain or renew licences

Mrs Susan Rimaitas, who established the campaign, said:

“Our beloved mother was taken from us in a situation which was not inevitable, but entirely avoidable. Ultimately, she was killed by a very selfish man who chose to ignore repeated medical advice telling him that his eyesight failed the legal limit to drive.

“He showed a complete disregard for the safety of others, putting his own convenience before the law, before ethics, before human lives.

“However, it was all too easy for him to keep on getting behind the wheel, and shockingly, the Inquest highlighted that there are likely many thousands more like him out there on the roads.

“This is because, as a country, we have no system of regular eyesight checks, and no system requiring proof of visual ability for the DVLA to hand out renewed licences.”

MPs have requested a meeting with the Transport Secretary to support the introduction of new legislation.