Vehicle Speed Outside Schools

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I want to start this adjournment debate on road safety by reading from a letter written by one of my constituents, Lydia Morley, who is a 10-year-old pupil at Morley primary school in my constituency of Mid Derbyshire. She starts by recognising the two top priorities a school must have. It must provide

“an extraordinary place for developing the minds of young children”

and

“safety”

for those who attend. Her next words summarise effectively what today’s debate is about.

“Not all motorists adhere to the speed limit outside our school, and some drivers don’t see the danger in driving over the 30 mph speed limit. This is such recklessness as this could cause a fatal accident. The evidence clearly shows that the proximity of the 40 mph sign is far too close to the pelican crossing which all the parents and children use on a daily basis.”

She says she strongly agrees with the campaign to move the 40 mph sign to the other side of Church Lane, Morley. Lydia ends with words I want everyone in this Chamber and the decision-makers at Derbyshire County Council to hear:

“Your actions could change the lives of the pupils at Morley School and we will no longer have to look left and right in fright.”

It is for the reasons raised by my young constituent that I am grateful to have secured this debate on road safety outside Morley primary school. After visiting the school in June and on several other occasions and after speaking to staff about the problem of speeding traffic and poor traffic safety measures, I knew that a debate was vital to ensure that something was done. I fear, however, that a child will be killed before any action is taken.

The problem is simple: Morley primary school is located on a busy A-road, the A608, which runs to and from the centre of Derby. I believe it is the only school in Derbyshire to be located on an A-road with no drop-off area on the school side. Parents have to park at the pub opposite, leaving children no option but to cross the A-road at the puffin crossing. As an added safety precaution, the school has purchased and installed safety railings near the puffin crossing, where the children wait for the beeping and the green man to appear, but they are still at severe risk given the speed of cars going past the school.

There is currently a 30 mph speed limit on the road outside the school, but it is ignored by a worryingly high number of motorists during the peak hours in the morning when motorists travel into and out of Derby for work. A survey of traffic speeds conducted by the casualty reduction enforcement support team, undertaken between 3 June and 18 June, showed that over half the vehicles driving past the school during the day did so above the speed limit, with 85% moving at an average speed of more than 36.3 mph. The total number of cars surveyed was 192,802, meaning that over 163,000 cars were speeding.

During the morning school run, between 8 am and 9 am, when we should be keeping children safe on their way to school, 85% of traffic travels at an average of 33 mph, which, while not as fast as in the rest of the day, is still above the speed limit. It only takes one speeding car to hit a child for us to have a preventable tragedy on our hands. I do not want the death of a child on my conscience. All the county council can say is that there have been no fatalities outside the school so far.

Of course, the morning run is not the only time children have to cross the road. They do so when they leave school at the end of the day and for any outside activities, such as swimming lessons. That is a minimum of 200 crossings a day. The school, whose campaign I will get to shortly, has conducted its own checks. In a 40-minute period, while a police van was visible and children were using the crossing, one vehicle showed a maximum speed of 59 mph and four travelled in excess of 40 mph. I have been outside the school and witnessed the heavy traffic and the speed at which it travels. Some cars did not even stop at a red light, and parents had to grab their children to prevent a fatality.

The facts on speeding cars are stark. The risk of death from being hit at 30 mph is 50%. It is approximately four times higher at 40 mph. On rural A-roads, such as the A608, fatal accidents are four times more likely than on urban A-roads. These statistics relate to adults. Children are much more likely to die from being hit by a vehicle—even one travelling at 30 mph. The campaign I am supporting and wish to promote here calls for a reduction in the speed limit outside the school to 20 mph and an expansion of the 30 mph speed limit zone in the surrounding areas. Reducing speed limits to 20 mph has been shown to reduce the number of child pedestrian deaths by 70%, and 20 mph zones are now relatively widespread, with more than 2,000 schemes in operation in England alone.

A speed limit of 20 mph puts people, not cars, first, which is important when thinking about road crossings for young children. These zones are also low cost and high benefit. For example, Portsmouth converted 1,200 streets in the city to 20 mph zones, at a cost of just over £500,000, and here in London, Transport for London estimates that 20 mph zones are already saving the city more than £20 million every year by preventing crashes.

Vital to this plan is better signage leading up to and inside the 20 mph zone. At present, motorists travelling at 40 or 50 mph on the A-road do not have enough time or distance to reduce their speed safely. It is also confusing for motorists to see signs for 40 mph followed quickly by signs saying they have to travel at 30 mph. An increase in the size of the 30 mph zone before it goes into a 20 mph zone would go a long way towards reducing confusion and giving motorists enough time to reduce their speed.

The other necessary measure is better enforcement of the speed limits, with those going over them knowing that they will be fined. I think attitudes towards speeding outside the school would change very quickly if motorists knew they would be seen and fined. It is no good fining people after the event. Just as an unworn seatbelt is pointless, so an unenforced speed limit makes almost redundant any efforts to keep children safe. It will take only one child to be killed for this to go from a hypothetical problem to a conversation with a grieving parent to explain why we had done nothing.

Derbyshire County Council recently promised it would look into installing cameras at school crossings to replace school-crossing patrols. The problem, as highlighted by my Conservative colleagues on the council, is that there is a big difference between people saying they will do something and actually doing it. The parents of pupils at the school who drop their children off in the morning and collect them are behaving very responsibly, parking away from the road to avoid congestion and giving children a safe place from which to exit their cars. The children are well trained on road safety, waiting patiently at the crossing for the beeping to start, but when the all clear is given, they understandably rush in excitement to get to the other side of the road and into school. If a car has not stopped by that point, they will run straight into it.

I reiterate that this is not a concern solely of parents and pupils at Morley primary school. A 2011 study by the campaign group, Living Streets, showed that speeding traffic scares over a third of children and young people walking to school, and that one in five is concerned about the lack of safety crossing-points on their journey. No change is going to stop the possibility of injuries completely, but let us reward the sensible behaviour of children and pupils with sensible behaviour on our behalf.

This Government have already led the way in focusing on encouraging children to walk to school and making provisions for that. In July, the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), commenced the cycling and walking investment strategy, which will look at how to get more children walking to school. I look forward to seeing the results of that study.

A number of policy proposals are out there, including park-and-stride schemes, but the county council will really have to listen to what is happening in the area it purports to represent. There is another problem—this does not concern the school—because Broomfield Hall college is based further down the same road, and students have to cross it with cars going in excess of the speed limit of 40 mph. They are taking their lives in their hands as well. This road is very dangerous so I would like to force the county council to look at the problem again. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.