I too bear the emotional scars of a car crash — and a crime left unpunished...

MY MUM got the phone call every parent dreads. It was a policeman, telling her that her oldest child, Michael, and I had been involved in a serious car crash.

‘Are they alive?’ Mum asked, only to be told she needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible, perhaps to say her final goodbyes.

We were youngsters at the time. I can still remember Mum crying at my bedside before I went into surgery.

The crash, caused by a drunk, driving on the wrong side of the road, was many years ago.

Yet I can vividly recall the car’s headlights, the awful sound of the collision and the blood.

Even writing this now brings back the awful images.

However, I have one sweet memory from that terrible night: my big brother Michael beside me in the ambulance holding my hand and, for the first time ever, telling me he loved me.

I’m relating this story because these memories came flooding back when I read this week how Charlotte Charles, the mother of a 19-year-old boy, received a phone call to say he had been involved in a road crash.

Harry was crushed on his motorcycle when it was hit by a car said to be travelling on the wrong side of the road in Northamptonshire.

His mum had no chance to say goodbye because he soon died in hospital.

Subsequently, she learned that the driver was the wife of an American diplomat and was claiming diplomatic immunity against prosecution. This was despite the police telling Mrs Charles that they have CCTV footage of the car on the wrong side of the road.

Most shockingly, the woman was then secretly flown back to the U.S., where President Donald Trump crassly said that she would not return to Britain.

Where do I start with such a case? The grotesque abuse of diplomatic immunity? or Trump’s ‘insensitive, clumsy, oafish and insulting’ reaction? Those were the words used by Harry’s family lawyer.

In the case of the crash involving my brother and me, the reckless driver who hit us was not breathalysed and was never charged by police with any offence. It took us months to recover fully and I still have scars from the accident.

of course, my story isn’t anywhere near as serious as the one involving Harry’s mum, but I know the pain of being a victim of a crime that has gone unpunished.

Is it too much to ask for Anne Sacoolas to come back to the UK and meet her victim’s mum face-to-face — mother to mother — and explain what happened?