Road Safety

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

There are two issues that I wish to raise in this debate. The first one relates to an issue that I have previously raised with the Minister, which is that of road poles. This is about how we can minimise the casualties in the collisions on our roads. The second one is about how we can make roads in the far south-west, particularly in Devon, safer. The Road Safety Foundation has declared that half of all Britain’s road deaths take place on just 10% of the road network. One of those roads runs through the constituency that I represent. The stretch of the A38 that goes through Devon is one of the most dangerous roads in our county. Members who have spoken in road safety debates in Westminster Hall will know that this issue is close to my heart, because I have spoken particularly about a constituent of mine called Trevor Gorman, whose son—also called Trevor—was killed in a road collision on the A38 last June, along with his friends Marshall and Zachary. Their van collided with a road traffic signpost and all three men were killed instantly. The post that they collided with was made of steel that was not designed to crumple, collapse on impact or absorb shock. Hard steel posts are common on nearly all major roads, from smaller B roads through to the motorway network. Experts at the inquest stated that the pole met requirements when it was erected in the 1990s, but it has not been replaced or upgraded since.

The accident that took the lives of those three men could have been avoided if the steel signpost in an accident blackspot had been upgraded to a frangible pole. Members will have seen frangible poles on the road network. They are lattice-shaped poles that are designed to absorb impact, so they do not have a hard surface against the impact. Ever since his son’s death, Mr Gorman has been campaigning tirelessly to improve road safety standards, swapping hard steel poles for frangible ones. This may sound like a small technical detail, but it can save lives. Mr Gorman wants to ensure that no family has to suffer the grief that he and his family have been through after the loss of his son and his son’s two friends, and to ensure that they have not died in vain; his strength really is inspiring.

Plymouth City Council, particularly Councillor Mark Coker, has been galvanising support for replacing hard steel poles with frangible poles in the accident blackspots in our city, but this is an initiative that every single local authority could be doing. I would like the Minister to look at whether support can be given to local authorities where accident blackspots exist in order to replace hard steel poles with frangible poles. This will save some lives. We will not be able to affect the stagnation in the number of road deaths with one silver bullet, as we will need lots of different measures, such as those mentioned in this debate, but replacing hard steel poles would be one small effort. The work that Councillor Coker has been doing in Plymouth has the support of Public Health England, and Devon and Somerset fire and rescue service.

As well as poles, we need to look at the other items on the roadsides that are not frangible. I am talking about trees in particular. The London plane tree may have been instrumental in saving air quality in the Victorian era and the silver birch may be a similar saviour for dealing with nanoparticles and microparticles in the 21st century, but the trees along our roadsides are not frangible, and many people die or are seriously injured in collisions with trees. We need a solution to address the hard surfaces that people can collide with, particularly on the roads where such accidents really happen, and the A38 in Devon is one of those roads. Extending the M5 from Exeter to the Tamar bridge will make a substantial difference to safety, because motorways are the safest roads on our network. The Minister has bids from Devon County Council and Plymouth City Council to look at that. I would be grateful if he lent his support not only to the frangible road pole campaign, but to the plans to extend the M5.

[Mr Speaker]

The Minister will be called to give a two-minute wind-up at no later than 9.58 pm. Members can do the arithmetic for themselves; I encourage them to be considerate of one another.