The number of deaths on West Yorkshire’s roads has risen alarmingly this year.

The fatalities include the death of Shelley schoolgirl Katelyn Dawson in an accident in Moldgreen in January and the four young men killed in a road horror in Leeds last weekend.

Katelyn, who was 15, was hit by a grey BMW which left Wakefield Road at Moldgreen and collided with her and two other pedestrians on Wednesday, January 10.

The popular Shelley College pupil suffered multiple injuries and was airlifted to Leeds General Infirmary where she died later that day. The investigation is still ongoing.

Four young men were killed when the car they were in was in collision with an Uber people carrier taxi in the Horsforth area of Leeds in the early hours of last Saturday morning.

Flowers at the scene of the Horsforth fatal collision

From the start of 2018 until Friday, July 6 there have been 43 collisions on West Yorkshire’s roads which have resulted in a fatality compared to 27 collisions which resulted in a fatality over the same period last year.

Det Chief Insp Jim Griffiths, who is in charge of the Major Collision and Enquiry Team, said: “One of the hardest jobs a police officer has to do is to visit relatives and tell them a loved one has died.

“It is that much harder for relatives to deal with when that death could have been easily prevented. So if you have to tell a mother that her son has died because a driver was too tired and lost his concentration it makes it that bit more difficult to deal with.

“We are asking people to stop and think about their driving or that of their loved ones.”