Road Safety

Andy MacNae Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andy MacNae (Rossendale and Darwen) (Lab)]

Happy new year, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for the chance to have this debate, and I thank the Minister for her attendance and for her work on tackling this issue, including through the upcoming road safety strategy.

I requested the debate because our current approach to road safety is in desperate need of overhaul. Although a few local authorities have robust and innovative approaches to road safety, too many lack the resources or political will to implement proactive safety measures, which is increasingly making road safety a postcode lottery. Too often, safety interventions come as a response to collisions, rather than as proactive measures to prevent them. We do not listen to our communities and have failed to invest and to learn from international best practice. As a result, progress in reducing road deaths has largely plateaued in recent years. The UK has passed a grim and shaming milestone: 500,000 people have died on the roads in Great Britain since records began in 1926. That is more than the number of UK citizens killed as a result of warfare in the same period, including in the second world war.

I am well aware that this is a complex and multi-dimensional issue to which we cannot do justice in such a short debate, so rather than trying to address every aspect of road safety, I will instead focus on a couple of linked aspects that are of particular concern to my Rossendale and Darwen constituents—specifically, speeding and issues related to large commercial vehicles. Rossendale and Darwen is a constituency of A roads running down valleys, with relatively few alternative routes, and most residential and commercial development extends along those lines. I live off Burnley Road in Bacup, and the lived experience of residents along that road serves to highlight most of the issues I want to raise today. Ask anyone who lives on Burnley Road and they will tell you that speeding is endemic. There have been serious injuries and fatalities, but more fundamentally, residents will cite numerous close calls and the fear they generate.

For example, one house on a bend in the road has now been hit by speeding vehicles three times. In one case, a vehicle impacted on a spot where a pedestrian had been standing just seconds before, and when we lived on the main road, a car judged to be speeding at over 100 mph hit my wife’s car with such force that it was lifted up and landed on mine—that was in a 30 mph zone. There are many more stories like those; indeed, just this morning, constituents contacted me about a particularly serious close call, which I cannot detail now because it may go to court. To compound this, the road is very heavily used by large commercial vehicles.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy MacNae]

I will—it would be a pleasure.

[Jim Shannon]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this debate forward. I spoke to him beforehand—through two or three different people, but I got to him eventually. I was intrigued by the title of the debate, “Prevention-based road safety and community involvement”, simply because in my constituency, back in October of last year, we had a double-decker bus taking children from school. It was travelling along the Ballyblack Road outside Carrowdore, going towards Bangor and Newtownards, and it fell over. Thank goodness, nobody was killed, but some children were injured.

The point I wanted to make, which I think is important and fits with the theme of the hon. Gentleman’s debate, is that while we must have ongoing road safety and infrastructure projects in place, we also need community involvement in safety. It was the community who responded to the incident—the nurses and doctors on the road and the farmers who came across the fields. Community involvement is really important; if we want to improve safety, we must have the community tied in.

[Andy MacNae]

I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman—indeed, that is the main subject that I will try to focus on today. It is hugely important that we listen to our communities, because in the end, not only do our communities know best, but they are the ones who experience the consequences of these decisions.

Burnley Road is very heavily used by large commercial vehicles, and there have been numerous close calls with those vehicles as well. Residents see them speeding or travelling in convoy, too often with their driver on a mobile phone. This is a massive concern around the local primary school, which—like many in Rossendale and Darwen—is sited directly on the main road. Last year, two big wagons managed to crash into each other just outside the school. Narrow pavements and a lack of safe crossing areas further increase the risk, and it is hardly a surprise that many parents are reluctant to let their kids walk even a short distance to school. I cannot think of anyone who rides a bike there.

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

In my constituency, we have the busy A444, which runs from Stanton right through to Acresford on the border with North West Leicestershire. That road has varying speed limits along its length. It is a huge concern to the community; we have large articulated lorries travelling very fast on that road, sometimes on very skinny roads. We also have a primary school close to Stanton where there is no close pelican crossing, so there is no safe way for families with young children to cross the road and get them to school. My community feels very much that highways authorities do not listen to sense when it comes to speed limits. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time for us to work with local communities and reconsider their involvement in how rules are made for the application of speed limits and where we put crossings?

[Andy MacNae]

I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. She has framed her example tremendously well—the greatest fear that most of us have is that combination of primary schools, unsafe roads and large vehicles. Sadly, that can only end one way.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Andy MacNae]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket (Peter Prinsley).

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I am just going to make the point to Members that interventions are getting very long. We have some hours to conclude this debate, so if Members wish to make a full contribution, they will be able to do so, rather than simply making an intervention.

[Andy MacNae]

My hon. Friend raises a hugely important issue about the regulation of commercial vehicles, and the level of responsibility that companies and employers take for their drivers is a crucial part of this debate.

To return to the story of Burnley Road in Rossendale, I have described the various instances of close calls, and when we bring all this together, the obvious conclusion that residents reach, including myself, is that without further action further deaths and serious injuries are inevitable. The great fear we have is that everyone can see this coming, and when it comes and there has been no action, I think we will all feel that we have failed.

[Rachel Taylor (North Warwickshire and Bedworth) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing forward this debate, which is hugely important. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Jodie Gosling) here, as we share on the edge of our constituencies one of the most dangerous road junctions in the country, between the end of Woodford Lane and the A5 in Mancetter. Our communities know that dangerous accidents happen there on a far too regular basis, with fatalities and serious injuries requiring attendance from air ambulances as well as other crews. Does my hon. Friend agree that our communities know best about needing to implement preventive strategies for road safety rather than waiting for yet more lives to be lost before we actually do something about it?

[Andy MacNae]

Again, I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. The role of communities is absolutely vital.

[Matt Rodda (Reading Central) (Lab)]

In my own area, there is a serious problem with a lack of co-operation between Oxfordshire county council, as the neighbouring local authority, and Reading borough council. Sadly, Oxfordshire, despite requests from Reading, has allowed heavy goods vehicles to go through a Reading suburb called Caversham and into Reading town centre when they could be diverted on to much safer routes. There have been repeated requests for Oxfordshire to work more constructively with Reading. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that there should be greater emphasis on co-operation between neighbouring local authorities as part of this preventive approach, which he is so ably describing, to try to avoid unnecessary injuries and deaths?

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[Andy MacNae]

Absolutely. I will touch on this later, but I feel that devolution and local government reorganisation create a huge opportunity to ensure new levels of co-operation between authorities, and we should have no hard borders when it comes to road safety.

Again, the conclusion we reach is that we need action to prevent deaths and injuries, yet when communities raise their concerns and real-world experience with the county council and the police, they are told that the KSI—killed or seriously injured—data does not meet the threshold for speed cameras and other meaningful interventions.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, too often, an accident waiting to happen has been forced to become an accident that has happened before action is taken, and that when communities know that a road they live on and live with every day is unsafe, we should listen to those communities much more and act before the accident happens?

[Andy MacNae]

I agree entirely. Again, it is devastating for communities to raise those issues repeatedly, stridently and sometimes desperately, yet feel that they are not being heard. The message they get back is, in effect, “We have to wait for someone to get killed before we do anything”, which is surely is not the message our communities should be hearing.

As well as Burnley Road in Rossendale, I could tell stories about Todmorden Road, Burnley Road East through Whitewell Bottom, Market Street in Whitworth, Bury Road in Edenfield, Newchurch Road in Waterfoot, Bolton Road, Sunnyhurst Lane, Hollins Grove and Pole Lane in Darwen. In each case, residents see close calls day by day, but are told that the statistics do not merit action, and even when they do, they are simply told there is no money. This approach is nonsensical and out of line with even the county council’s own adopted vision zero strategy and is decades behind those employed internationally. Ultimately it costs lives and money. Beyond this, unsafe roads have far-reaching impacts affecting an area’s sense of place and identity. They take lives, devastate families and shake up communities. Roads felt to be unsafe have a significant impact on the day-to-day lives of people living near them. Residents feel less able to get around, uncomfortable on their own doorstep and cut off from each other.

[David Smith (North Northumberland) (Lab)]

This is an important subject. There seems to be a common denominator in many of the comments: the significance of rural areas. I note that my hon. Friend’s constituency has large rural areas, as does mine. Does he agree that there is a particular challenge—whether with rural B roads or even major national roads or national infrastructure, such as the A1 that runs through my constituency—with the type of vehicles on the roads and the proximity to small local communities, making them particularly unsafe, and that that should therefore be a priority for our national road safety strategy?

[Andy MacNae]

Absolutely, and those committees feel particularly vulnerable and under threat. The issue is that mixture of rural roads coupled with the speed limits and then compact villages sitting along those roads, with those changes in road conditions.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. The hon. Lady might not have been here to hear my earlier comment. There is plenty of time for Members to make speeches if they so choose—this debate does not need to conclude until 7.30 pm—but we really must not have prepared speeches read out disguised as interventions.

[Andy MacNae]

My hon. Friend makes that vital point extremely well. I will touch on it again later, but young drivers are an important topic that merits a debate in its own right.

On feeling safe or unsafe on roads and the impact of that, we can take the example of active travel. The biggest reason why people do not walk or cycle to work or school is concern over road safety. This forces people to travel by car, with all the impacts that brings and accentuating all the issues we are talking about.

[Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)]

I rise at the point when the Deputy Speaker is changing; it feels like something from “Dr Who”—[Laughter.] Apologies, I was thinking out loud there.

This debate is on an extremely important subject for my hon. Friend’s constituents. On active travel, good habits start early in life, and that is particularly true of walking and cycling. In Edinburgh South West, parents and residents are keen to work with the council to make it easier and safer for children to walk to Nether Currie primary school, and they are really open to collaboration. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we are serious about tackling road safety issues in rural areas and our towns and cities, we have to work with our school communities to make sure it is absolutely embedded in them?

[Andy MacNae]

Absolutely. This is a hugely important issue and, as in many other areas, we know the solutions. Fantastic work is done by organisations such as Active Travel England that detail the solutions, yet our current or past funding structures make it incredibly difficult. I am campaigning in our constituency for a safe path to a school, yet I find there are essentially no dedicated funding opportunities to meet that very obvious and stark need. This is an absolutely crucial area.

I mentioned active travel, but there is also the question of older people. Residents in social housing along Newchurch Road in Rossendale feel trapped in their estate because there is literally nowhere safe to cross the road near them to reach the amenities they need.

In 2023, there were 1,624 road deaths in Great Britain and 132,977 casualties in total. Pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists still make up a disproportionate share of those killed or seriously injured on UK roads. Department for Transport estimates suggest that the annual cost of reported road collisions is around £43 billion. We cannot afford any of these costs, so what do we do about it? We know the basic principles, and we have touched on them in the debate, with many Members raising them brilliantly.

Many local authorities have adopted strategies based around vision zero, which is an approach originally adopted in countries such as Sweden and the Netherlands. It emphasises that no level of death or serious injury is acceptable on the roads, and it is focused on prevention, protection and post-collision response, coupled with evidence-based targets and robust safety performance indicators. We know that such approaches can be effective and save a great deal of money over the long term, but as we have seen and heard, there seems to be a huge gap between strategy and practical implementation.

If we want to be serious about tackling this issue, we must move towards a truly proactive, community-led approach to road safety that is informed by statistics and not led by them. In such a model, rather than claiming that a centrally held database knows better, we trust the instincts, experiences and wishes of those who use the roads every day. Instead of waiting around until enough people have been hurt to merit an intervention, we proactively identify high-risk areas, and we act.

An excellent example of that approach in action can be seen in the Netherlands. Over the past decade, both Rotterdam and the Hague have been using an algorithm to determine the likelihood of crashes on their roads. The model considers a range of factors, including past crashes, traffic flow, the features of the road, and the presence of on-road parking. From that, it creates a risk rating for each road. Crucially, this rating informs, rather than leads, the local authorities’ decisions. Community experience and input are a key factor in the decision-making process. The ratings are combined with an analysis of the volumes and severity of complaints the authorities receive regarding specific roads. Out of this community-led, data-informed model, the local authorities choose to proactively intervene to protect their citizens.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. It is personal to me, as I lost my grandfather in a road traffic accident before I was even born, and my grandmother was left with disability. Shipley experienced 183 road casualties in 2023, one of which was fatal. My hon. Friend mentions vision zero. West Yorkshire has a vision zero partnership that seeks to eliminate all traffic fatalities and injuries by 2040. It brings together the combined authority with local authorities, emergency services and National Highways, as well as victim support and road safety campaigners—speaking to his point about community. Is there still a place—I suggest that there is—for these vision zero partnerships, alongside the community approaches that he is advocating?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. Before the hon. Member responds, I remind Members that interventions should be short and to the point.

[Andy MacNae]

I agree fully with my hon. Friend, and there is no conflict between a vision zero approach and the community-led approach I am talking about. The issue is that while vision zero has been adopted by many local authorities, the implementation falls far short of the intent. It is therefore a question of finding the appropriate implementation and delivery mechanisms, rather than just rehashing the strategy.

As well as the Netherlands model I mentioned, similar preventive work has been pioneered by researchers using automatically collected data from car sensors to identify dangerous sections of roads. That is interesting, because it collects data that key success indicator stats do not highlight. They collate real-world data where cars harshly and suddenly brake. These models have proven effective in predicting areas of danger, and such systems could be used to proactively examine hotspots before collisions occur, taking account of near misses and validation experiences with communities such as ours.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. In my constituency, the A96, which goes from Aberdeen to Huntly and up to Inverness, and the A90 north of Ellon are known as accident blackspots. On these roads, we know that local residents are not going out, because of the fear of an accident, which has an impact on our local economy, and emergency vehicle response times. Does he agree that emergency response times and local economic impacts should be part of the basis of assessments of where safety improvements should be put in on roads across the country?

[Andy MacNae]

I thank the hon. Member for making that point. How we value road safety interventions must recognise the full gamut of those impacts. Far too often, we use narrow measures of cost-benefit. Emergency response, impacts on wider infrastructure and the general feeling of being unsafe are hugely important considerations.

I have tried to highlight a few approaches to identifying areas of risk proactively before collisions occur. Again, we know how to do this. With those risks identified, we also have a range of effective, advanced interventions that we can utilise to reduce the risk of incidents. Average speed cameras have been proven to be particularly effective, yet due to fears about cost and a lack of awareness of advanced technology, many authorities have been reluctant to implement them.

Looking at the evidence, a review by the RAC Foundation found a 36.4% reduction in serious or fatal injuries at sites with average speed cameras installed, with a further 16% reduction in incidents of all severities. In some cases, the installation of speed cameras has reduced incidents by up to 86%. With Lancashire county council valuing the cost of a road-related fatality at £2 million—I do not know how it gets to that figure, but none the less that is the figure being used—it is no surprise that effective safety measures like these save the Government money in the long term.

The College of Policing has found that through a reduction in medical treatment and repair fees, the financial benefits of these schemes exceed their costs by 3:1. On the point made by the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), that is on a narrow basis, perhaps not recognising some of the wider impacts. The figure only increases when we look at the benefits beyond five years. I urge the Minister to use the upcoming strategy to stress the significant long-term benefits of proactively implementing speed reduction schemes with average speed cameras.

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend talked about a number of schemes, but has he looked at the 20 mph speed limit in Wales, which came into force in September 2023? Insurance companies such as Esure have said that it has reduced risk and that it is also beginning to reduce the premium that people pay in residential areas. We do not just have long and fast roads in our constituencies, but also residential areas, where that 20 mph speed limit has an impact.

[Andy MacNae]

There is no doubt that speed limits are a crucial part of this work, as long as they are targeted and appropriate. However, I cite the need for effective enforcement, because if people feel that there are no consequences from breaking those speed limits, they will be broken. Enforcement is a crucial part of the consideration.

Returning to average speed cameras, I urge the Minister to consider how sharing best practice between authorities could be improved. As the College of Policing noted, and as I and colleagues have seen all the time, there is a significant variation in the methods used to implement average speed cameras and assess their validity. Many authorities are unaware of the significant cost saving measures that have been pioneered over the last decade and the new technologies that exist.

To take one example, we were told by Lancashire county council that a relatively small average speed system on one key road in Rossendale was unviable as it would cost many millions to implement and maintain, yet when we approached a Home Office-approved supplier recommended by another local authority seen to be a pioneer in the area, we were given a quote of £800,000 for not just that scheme, but three others that together covered all the key risk areas in Rossendale. That huge disparity demonstrates not only how funding might be used inefficiently, but how local authorities are unnecessarily being held back from implementing schemes by an out-of-date view of their costs.

We need to recognise that cost is a genuine factor and that funding models under the previous Government were wholly inadequate, with road safety budgets squeezed alongside other local authority budgets. Under the last Labour Government, we had a system of netting off road fines, which helped to fund road safety enforcement activities. That should be reviewed as a possible funding stream to pay for road safety improvements, increasing policing numbers and making the best use of new and existing technology to reduce road risk. With increased information sharing, clarity over the costs of such schemes and hypothecated funds, there is significant potential to reduce the obstacles to enforcement that local authorities believe they face.

In addition to speed reduction methods, major gains can be made through improving pavements and creating cycle lanes through a genuine safe-system approach. Shockingly, of all road deaths in 2023, 25% were pedestrians, with cyclists accounting for 5%. Despite many local vision zero strategies, our road safety design evidently fails to protect those vulnerable users. I urge the Minister to use the upcoming strategy to encourage councils to meet their ambitions with action, utilising support from Active Travel England and genuinely adopting safe system approaches. That requires proactive interventions, whether through establishing clearer and protected cycle lanes, constructing safe footways or building new traffic lights and crossings where needed.

Another key area that we can tackle is the safety of commercial vehicles, as we have touched on. As I mentioned, there are schools in my constituency that border dangerous roads that are frequently used by large commercial vehicles. Due to the force of impact, HGVs are the second most dangerous vehicles on the road, killing 6.9 people per billion passenger miles—significantly higher than the comparative figure of 1.6 for cars. Considering that, it is completely unacceptable that in 2023, 36% of lorries were seen to exceed the speed limit. Drivers often have minimal oversight and training from companies, which have weak corporate safety standards.

We must proactively recognise and respond to the heightened risk that such vehicles pose. One crucial step could be to incentivise companies to maintain high safety standards in their fleet, be that through offering lower insurance to companies that demonstrate best practice, naming and shaming companies that do not, or even making companies fully liable for work-related collisions.

Alongside that, a variety of other proactive, low-cost methods could be used to improve the safety of our roads—for instance, tightening the regulations on tyre safety. Poor tyres accentuate the impact of speeding or poor driving. Over the past decade, an average of 182 people have been killed or seriously injured per year because of poor tyre conditions. MOTs flag over two million cars with sub-standard tyres each year, 1 million of which are so poor that they are considered actively dangerous. Given the improvements in tyre technology, coupled with the fact that the highest proportion of serious incidents occur in the winter months, there is room for the Minister to consider mandating that all new vehicles be equipped with all-season tyres.

More generally, there are significant opportunities offered by safe vehicle technologies, which can be embedded through advanced vehicle safety regulations. Let me touch on a point raised earlier about driver education, particularly protecting young drivers. This is a complex area, which needs a debate in its own right, but given that 16% of car driver fatalities are younger drivers, there is no doubt that this area really needs attention.

Finally, as we have touched on, increasing devolution is also central to ensuring that communities’ voices are heard. In places such as Lancashire, road safety interventions are still determined on a county level. Officials and county councillors are often very far removed from the roads and communities impacted by their decisions. When this responsibility is held on a unitary level, the voices of communities are louder, and decision makers are much closer to the area in question. Given the widespread local government reorganisation coming in this Parliament, the Minister has a significant opportunity to establish best practice in new unitary and combined authorities. I urge her to seize this unique opportunity, and to provide meaningful support and guidance to these emerging authorities.

To wrap up, considering the reactive and inefficient approach to road safety that the Minister inherited from the previous Government, I urge her to utilise her upcoming road safety strategy to move the country towards a preventive, community-led and statistics-informed model of road safety, alongside a sustainable funding approach. Central to that approach, I call for the following measures to be given detailed consideration within the road safety strategy: first, ending the safety postcode lottery via a robust, mandated national road safety strategy, based on a community-led, data-informed, safe system approach and, within that, prioritising lived experience and perceptions of safety over arms-length data.

[Mr Mark Sewards (Leeds South West and Morley) (Lab)]

On data, as a councillor in Farnley and Wortley and now as the MP for Leeds South West and Morley, I found that when I tried to help residents with accident spots on problem roads, I was often told that the average speed on that road was not high enough for action to be warranted. I have been met with that excuse so many times—too many to count—as both a councillor and as an MP. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to move away from that? Of course we should rely on data, but we should also speak to the people who live next to those accident spots, so that we can deal with them properly.

[Andy MacNae]

Absolutely. That is the essence of what we are talking about. Given that average speed data is a blunt tool anyway, we should ask ourselves who knows best: the people who live on that road and experience it every single day, or someone sitting looking at an algorithm in county hall far away? As politicians and representatives of our constituents, the answer that we should give is that the community knows best. We should put in systems to support their everyday lived experience, not the other way around.

Secondly—and this point is linked to the first—we have to use the opportunities presented by devolution and local government reorganisation to embed best practice, including improving information sharing between authorities regarding the availability of new and emerging road safety technologies.

Thirdly, we must address the barriers to proactive implementation and enforcement measures, particularly average speed cameras. Fourthly, we have to develop a sustainable funding model based on bringing back netting off. Fifthly, we must make companies fully responsible for the actions of their drivers on public roads. Sixthly, we need a genuine safe system approach to road and pavement design to protect pedestrians and cyclists. Finally, we need to address accentuating factors via advanced safety and vehicle safety regulations and develop approaches to protect young drivers.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I am looking forward to hearing the Minister’s response, as road safety is a big issue in the Sussex Weald. Before I call her, though, I am told there are three very short contributions from Back Benchers. My worry is that there are more people standing than I have been alerted to—they will need to make their way to the Chair quickly, in the appropriate way, and make it clear what they are trying to do. Contributions will be short. First, I call my fellow Brummie, Paulette Hamilton.