Darwin St John Ambulance paramedic Warren Purse on Christmas road-safety crusade

Before you get into a car or onto the back of a motorbike this Christmas season, paramedic Warren Purse wants you to read about the moment his family’s life changed forever.

It was in the afternoon of Remembrance Day 1999, not that there was ever any danger that Mr Purse would forget the moment when his wife Paula, the mother of his four young children, lost her life in a road accident not far from their home.

In the years since, the 55-year-old paramedic has been to more accident sites than he cares to remember.

But there is one site near his home — which he has to pass every day — that marks the exact location where his family’s hearts were broken, where their future dreams were left shattered beside a motorbike on the baking bitumen…