Brake produces guides for people bereaved or seriously injured in a road crash. If you have been bereaved then the police are required to give you printed copies of our guides for bereaved adults and for bereaved children. If you have not received these, call our helpline on 0845 6038570.
Coping with grief following a road death: our guide on bearing the trauma and how to seek help. Read Coping with grief.
Procedures following a road death: our guide to practical and legal procedures ranging from seeing a loved one's body to court cases and compensation issues:
Read our England and Wales guide as web pages or download a PDF
Read our Scotland guide as web pages or download a PDF
Read our Northern Ireland guide as a PDF (web page version coming soon)
For translations of these guides, click here.
Read our additional advice on roadside memorials.
Access the standards of care you are entitled to receive in official codes.
Picture book for children bereaved by a road crash
Our book for children (pictured right) is full of warm illustrations and text that helps adults support children and answer their questions, and is best read in its printed form. Call our helpline on 0845 603 8570 for a free copy or ask your police contact.
What happens in an Intensive Care Unit?
This guide is for families whose loved ones are being cared for in an Intensive Care Unit following a road crash. Download here as a pdf or read as web pages here.
Advice for people seriously injured in road crashes
A guide to practical issues surrounding a serious injury and sources of support. Download pdfs for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. or read as web pages here.
Our support standards and making a comment
Read our support standards, including the standards we work to when preparing guides for road crash victims. You can read comments about our support work and, if you have used our helpline or bereavement guides, help us to make our services even better by providing feedback yourself. Feedback is important to us and also helps us achieve on-going funding for our charitable work.
Occasionally, we find out we could have done something better. If you think we could have done something better and wish to make a formal complaint please read our complaints policy.
We can't do it without you
Brake's support guides are funded by public donation and by a number of agencies, including the Ministry of Justice, The Scottish Government and the Police Service of Northern Ireland. If you want to help fund our support guides and help more people, click the fundraising button at the top of this site. Hear about two of the many bereaved families who have generously helped Brake by reading Katie's story and Jamie's story.
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