Road Safety: West Midlands

Mark Sewards Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Manuela Perteghella (Stratford-on-Avon) (LD)]

I am bringing forward this debate because of the many fatalities on the roads in the west midlands, and the catastrophic consequences of collisions and crashes. In seconds, happy worlds are turned upside down, lives are destroyed and families are left grieving their loved ones. My constituents are dying on the roads as a direct result of successive Governments’ inaction on tackling the scourge of speeding and dangerous driving, and I intend to set out exactly what must change.

Let me begin with an example that has stayed with me. On 19 May, a constituent contacted me to say that drivers on a road near them were regularly travelling at more than double the 30 mph speed limit. They were frightened, and they wanted something done, so I wrote to the Government to raise their concerns. The response I received was that the Department for Transport was not at that time considering any changes to the data used in assessing road safety interventions. On the same day that the response arrived, there was a fatal accident on that road—and that was the third death on south Warwickshire roads in a few days.

The Government must change their approach to road safety and intervene to save lives on our roads. They must also safeguard and consider all road users, and any new measures must protect vulnerable users such as pedestrians, walkers, cyclists and roller skaters, and ensure that funding for active travel infrastructure is available to communities so that people can enjoy safe walking, cycling and horse riding. Why must cycling infrastructure cost millions of pounds? Why is it so difficult to have separate and well-marked cycle and active travel lanes in Britain?

I welcome the Government’s road safety strategy, published in January. It is ambitious in its aim to cut the number of people killed or seriously injured on Britain’s roads by 65% by 2035 and by 70% for children under 16. Yet a strategy without teeth is not a strategy at all. The Government need to commit to radical solutions; tinkering at the edges is no longer sufficient. The scale of death and serious injury on our roads demands bold, evidence-based action—and it demands that now. We need national legislation that is properly enforceable, that sets clear thresholds for interventions on dangerous roads and that does not leave communities at the mercy of local councils that are failing in their duty of care.

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

Although the debate is about road safety in the west midlands, many of the lessons that the hon. Lady talks about will apply nationwide, including in Leeds South West and Morley. Does she share my frustration that some councils rely on mean average speed data to determine whether to make adjustments on certain roads? As a maths teacher, I really appreciate the mean, but it hides the outliers. If we have 100 outliers out of 10,000 cars, that still makes for a dangerous road. Does she agree that councils should change their approach?