Road Safety

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My noble friend has mentioned two of our key user groups for the road safety statement, the first being young road users. We will look at and research both a graduated learner scheme, which is the period up to when people pass their test, and then graduated driver licensing, which will consider driving at night and whether young users can carry passengers. We are also looking at eye tests, which would be free for older road users.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, part of the remit of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch is to improve air safety by making use of lessons learned from air accident investigations. There are similar remits for bodies that deal with marine and rail accidents. Given the need to reduce road accidents, it seems odd that we have no national road accidents investigation branch. Given that many other countries do, can the Minister explain why we do not?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. Indeed, it was my pleasure to visit the AAIB last Friday and it truly is a world leader in air accident investigation. Turning to road accident investigation, there are many things that the Government are doing. For example, we have committed £480,000 to road collision investigation work which is being undertaken by the RAC Foundation. This will look at the causation of accidents, which has changed significantly in recent years, and it will provide insights on investigations but also interventions.