Road Traffic Accidents: Hand-held Mobile Devices

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, for tabling this important Motion. I support most, though perhaps not all, of the proposals that she brought forward. Some of us remember that when drink-driving and seat-belt laws were introduced in the 1960s there were many objections from drivers, but of course we soon saw that many lives were saved.

We cannot be complacent when new proposals for safety are made. I have had several colleagues and friends killed in car accidents. I myself was nearly killed when hitchhiking in a once and once-only trip in a 100 miles-an-hour Jaguar, which nearly hit a tractor. Today we are reading about another cause of deaths: people using mobile phones at the time of the accident. How can we make drivers aware of the dangers and reform their behaviour?

Last year, I was driving through a small town in Somerset at about 35 miles an hour—which, I fear, was above the limit—and there was a speed camera. The police then sent me a letter inviting me to attend a morning’s training course to learn about the danger of speeding. I was impressed, as we saw excellent videos of accidents and how to improve one’s driving. It was instructive—for example, we learned that driving on country roads is particularly dangerous—but we were not informed about the dangers of driving while using a mobile phone or being distracted by infotainment systems.

I urge the Minister to ensure that these courses should include video and instruction about the accidents associated with drivers. Yesterday, I asked the Library whether there was any instruction in the Highway Code about the use of mobile phones. To my surprise, it was only in the most recent edition of 2016, where there is a reference in paragraphs 149 and 150, which are labelled,

“Mobile phones and in-vehicle technology”.

The warning is not strongly expressed, and no information is provided about penalties for driving when using mobile phones. Will the Minister consider strengthening those clauses and providing diagrams to show how drivers lose concentration when using mobile phones? Will the Minister also ensure that questions about mobile phones are asked by examiners during the driving test?

The House of Lords Committee on Science and Technology, of which I am a member, is currently considering, among other things, people’s behaviour in road vehicles and noticing how it will change as vehicles become partially or wholly self-driving or, as it is said, autonomous. It seems likely that there will be an even greater tendency for drivers to relax their attention not only when the vehicle has a semi-autonomous aspect but if they are using mobile phones or infotainment. This is a complex interaction which our committee has not considered, but perhaps we should.

In fact, it is not too fanciful to consider how people’s reactions, both physical and psychological, to the movement of the car may be affected by the input from the phone or media system. How will these complex interactions be incorporated in the new semi-autonomous vehicles emerging from the German car industry, which seems to be well down the track with new systems in which your car will autonomously react to the cars in front of it, and so on? If that will also take into account the use of the mobile phone by people in front of you and the people in front of them, it becomes even more complex. The Government need to work very closely with the auto industry to analyse and control these extraordinary new developments.

I have two final points. First, why not insist that mobile phones should not sit, as the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, suggested, nicely and conveniently on the dashboard? I suggest that, if you insist on using a mobile phone, you have a very big, nasty yellow thing sitting on your dashboard, so that everyone in the street knows you are using it. That is the trouble at the moment—you can hide using your mobile phone and no one knows you are doing it. We want to make what people are doing visible to their neighbours. I suggest that mobile phone should be uncomfortable, large, luminous, and seen to be anti-social. That is a new idea, and perhaps not so acceptable on the Benches opposite.

Secondly, the Highway Code in both paragraphs recommends rather strongly that if you want to use your mobile phone or laptop, you should go to a lay-by. That proposal seems sensible, but it will be used only if the Highways Agency greatly improves lay-bys, many of which are not safe and are often quite disgusting.

Bus Services Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Monday 24th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment reflects the importance that we on these Benches believe lies in the role of traffic commissioners and the enforcement that they have the power to undertake. If you look at their annual report, you will see that the traffic commissioners themselves complain of being overstretched. It is important, therefore, that we give them an express requirement to enforce regulations at a time when we are likely to see bus companies with a lower quality of service possibly impinging on the better bus companies that provide the very best service. I simply wanted to briefly underline the importance that we see in this simple amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, being a traffic commissioner, I had forgotten that we had very little training. I wonder whether, as part of this process, we need to train traffic commissioners much more.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for tabling his amendment. On the final point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I say that training is incumbent on every element of this Bill. Where we can improve training, that should be the focus of how we move forward in this area.

Administration of service permits are intended to be used to allow commercial services that do not operate under a franchise contract to operate in a franchised area. They are most likely to be used for cross-boundary services, but an operator can also apply for them to provide other services that a franchised network of services does not cover. Under the Bill, the franchising authority, rather than the traffic commissioner, will be responsible for dealing with applications for service permits, and new Section 123R of the Transport Act 2000 enables that franchising authority to attach conditions to service permits in certain circumstances.

I totally agree with the noble Lord’s objective that there should be a sanction for operators who do not comply with such conditions. The Bill already achieves this by enabling local authorities to revoke or suspend a service permit if the holder has failed to comply with a permit condition. This can be found in the new Section 123S to the Transport Act 2000, on page 26 of the Bill.

The amendment would also add a power for the traffic commissioner to cancel the registration of a service if the operator has failed to comply with its service permit. Under new Section 123J of the Transport Act 2000, no services that operate within a franchised area are registered with the traffic commissioner, including those operated under service permits, so this addition would have no practical effect. For services of this nature in a franchised area, the permit effectively replaces the registration and the local authority has the powers that it needs to deal with the issue that the noble Lord raises.

I hope that the explanation I have given about the provisions already in the Bill reassures the noble Lord that the intent of his amendment, which I agree with, is already captured in Clause 4, and that he will be content to withdraw his amendment on that basis.