Road Safety and the Legal Framework

Afzal Khan Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. Let me take the opportunity to contextualise the debate by showing the real impact of unsafe road behaviour when appropriate action is not taken. We should all aim for zero deaths and injuries on our roads and pavements, and the only way to achieve that is by supporting road safety with practical investment and appropriate legislation.

On Saturday, I attended a beautiful service at St Martin’s church at Birmingham’s first World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims. I was extremely honoured to have been invited to the event by RoadPeace. It was touching to remember all those who have lost their lives. Since the day was first commemorated 25 years ago, more than 30 million people have died on the world’s roads, including in the horrific scenes in my constituency last year in which six people were killed.

To bring focus to the issue and to the need for strong and fair judicial structures around road safety, I would like to read an extract from the poem that I read this weekend alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey):

“This is not the way things were supposed to be

To stare at a plaque with the words ‘Remember me’

And be filled with thoughts of you.

It had seemed that time was limitless, and there was still so much to say;

It had never occurred that one so full of life could be confined to yesterday.

Back then, road deaths were just stories to us,

small segments on the news,

And we never quite understood all the fuss;

Until we became the next family to walk in those shoes.”

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

In one terrible 24-hour period, three young people and four others were seriously injured on Greater Manchester roads. Our road traffic laws are failing to deliver justice or promote road safety. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government must review road safety in its entirety and ensure that we have measures to protect vulnerable road users such as those who have been killed in Greater Manchester?

[Preet Kaur Gill]

I absolutely agree.

The poem that I have just read was written by Lucy Harrison, the sister of my constituent. She lost her brother when a car going at 93 mph hit him as he crossed the road. Having had him taken from them, his family had to go through a trial and the Court of Appeal before the driver who caused the crash, and who had failed to stop, was given a sentence of four and a half years. The driver is now due to be released after serving just two years.

One point that Lucy has raised is that people talk about the incident as an accident. These crashes are not accidents. Road safety legislation is in place to make sure that people feel safe on and around our roads. If someone breaks the law and commits a crime on the road, we must call it what it is. She is therefore calling for tougher sentencing and a change in society’s perception of death by dangerous driving.

Any road policy designed to keep all road and pavement users safe, regardless of their mode of transport, requires an effective road justice system. A year on from the announcement of tougher sentences for drivers who kill, the Government have failed to introduce legislation. Families of road crash victims across the UK are still waiting for justice. As Lucy says, people need to see that her brother

“was a human with a family, not just a statistic, because it can just be like another road death where he became a statistic or a story.”

On behalf of Lucy, Tony Worth and the many other families of victims, I urge the Government to deliver justice for road crash victims and keep the dangerous drivers off the road.