The parents of a boy who suffered life-threatening injuries as he returned home from a Norfolk rugby tournament have started a petition to improve safety on coaches.

Cambs Times: Police at the scene in 2014.Police at the scene in 2014. (Image: © Archant Norfolk 2014)

Tracey and Nick Goold spoke to hosts Kate Garraway and Ben Shephard on ITV breakfast show Good Morning Britain yesterday after their son, Sebastian, lost his leg after falling out of a coach two years ago, on the A47 at Tilney All Saints.

Sebastian – who was nine at the time – from Lincolnshire, was travelling with team-mates from Stamford Rugby Club from a mini-rugby tournament at Holt on April 13 2014.

It was reported he fell from an exit door on the coach.

Sebastian was taken to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn, but was later transferred to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

Sebastian told the breakfast show: “I don’t remember anything clearly but I do remember talking to a boy called Drew, I’m not entirely sure what we were talking about.

“All of a sudden the door was open and before I knew it I was by the side of the road bleeding a lot.”

His twin brother Ben was also on the coach and Sebastian, who said he wanted to be a blade runner, added he now thought having an artificial leg was normal.

Mrs Goold said: “Seb would have died on the roadside had a nurse and the surgeon not been travelling back. It was by good luck.”

She said the issue was “of national importance” and they felt they had to speak out about now, so other families “don’t have to go through what we have suffered the last couple of years”.

Mr Goold said: “What we have learnt subsequently is that old coaches don’t need to have the same safety features new coaches have.”

But he added: “Safe means safe and if the legislation changes where safety features should be implemented onto coaches it shouldn’t be coaches which are manufactured on this date, it should be applied to all coaches.”