Improving Driver Safety

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Alicia Kearns

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of improving driver safety.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Sir Robert.

Imagine that you are at home, and you have just cleared away the dinner. There is a knock at the door, and you look at your partner: “Are you expecting anyone?” “No.” You answer the door, and a police officer is standing there to deliver the most dreadful news that anyone could ever hear: that your son or daughter has been killed in a car accident. I am sure everybody here would agree that the loss of a child is the very worst thing that could happen to anyone. It goes against the very order of things, and no family ever recovers from their loss.

Sadly, I have had a number of grieving parents come to my surgeries over the past 12 years to talk about the terrible impact of the death of a child who was either a passenger in a car or driving alone or with friends. My heart goes out to every parent who has ever had to receive that terrible news, and in particular my constituents Chris and Nicole Taylor, who lost their beloved daughter Rebecca in 2008. Chris and Nicole came to see me soon after I became an MP in 2010, and I have tried to support their brilliant campaign that seeks to significantly reduce the risk of any other young, inexperienced driver dying on our roads.

Evidence submitted by the Department for Transport to the Transport Committee’s young and novice driver inquiry in 2020 revealed that while young drivers account for only 7% of full driving licence holders, in 2019, they were involved in 23% of fatal and serious collisions in the UK. In 2021, the AA surveyed its members, asking them what they thought were the greatest safety risks to teenagers. The responses that came back were clear: members thought that drugs and gun and knife crime were the greatest risks to young people, but in fact, road deaths are far and away the greatest risk. They account for 17% of deaths of five to 19-year-olds, compared with 9% of all deaths being alcohol and drug related, and 7% being due to homicide. Road deaths clearly pose the much bigger risk.

Now, my constituents Chris and Nicole have joined forces with Radd Seiger, another constituent, who campaigned so tirelessly with Harry Dunn’s family to achieve justice for Harry following his tragic road death in 2019. Their campaign calls for new arrangements for young people as they learn to drive and become used to our busy and dangerous roads. First, they recommend that any learner driver should complete a minimum learning period of 50 hours’ driving, or six months in time, before they can take their practical driving test. During that time, they should complete a logbook of driving under different road and weather conditions. Secondly, they recommend that young drivers who have just passed their driving test should wait for a period of time—up to a year—before being allowed to carry other young passengers. Statistics have shown that young drivers are more likely to be involved in a collision when a similar-aged passenger is in the car. In 2016, 25% of casualties among those aged 17 to 24 were passengers.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Melton) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for raising that point about the so-called graduated driving licence and support her calls for it. Emily Challen, whose parents live in Normanton in my constituency, was killed when her friend had only had a driving licence for eight months, three of them were in the car, and they drove, tragically, into the back of a heavy goods vehicle. We need to protect our young people, because the significance and the responsibility of driving others is far beyond what I recognised to be the case when I was a young driver. As my right hon. Friend says, the stats clearly show that we need to protect our young people, so that they can protect their friends and loved ones. I ask the Minister to reflect on graduated driving licences in his response.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for telling the story of her constituent. Across the country, there are far too many similar, tragic cases.

The third recommendation of my constituents’ campaign is that young drivers should not be allowed to drive between midnight and 4 am. The risk of a young driver being involved in a collision is eight times higher between 2 am and 4 am on both weekdays and weekends. My constituents and I recognise that there will need to be exceptions to any such restrictions, such as for young parents taking their children out in a car or young people who are travelling to work between the hours of midnight and 4 am. It would be perfectly easy to create those exceptional circumstances. I have every sympathy with the aims of my constituents’ campaign, and I urge the Minister to look at the merits of these modest but potentially incredibly effective measures. A further recommendation that has been made to me by many others is that the use of black boxes for young drivers should be compulsory when they are first on the roads.