Road Safety

Peter Bottomley Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister and to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti). I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing this debate as part of his battery of attention.

I wish to add a few words that go beyond the law and away from enforcement. I had responsibility for road casualty reduction from 1986 to 1989. We set out a plan to reduce the fatalities and serious injuries by mistake and slight injuries by a third by the year 2000. Since then, successive generations—both of Ministers and of road users—have reduced the deaths from about 5,600 a year to about 1,750 a year. The numbers will fluctuate: the year before last, there was a slight increase, then last year there was a significant reduction. Part of that fluctuation is due to chance; part of it is due to factors beyond what we actually do.

What is clear is that it is what road users themselves do that makes the biggest difference. Safer roads, yes; safer vehicles, yes; better medicine, yes. However, the biggest change, as my hon. Friend has mentioned, has been in the consequences of over-the-limit drink-driving. Deaths in that category have come down from 1,200 a year to about 200 a year; there has been a reduction of more than four-fifths in the number of deaths caused by people driving after drinking the equivalent of a bottle of wine or more.

That reduction was not achieved by enforcement—there has been no change of law, no change of sentencing and no change of penalties. It has come about because more hosts have provided alcohol-free drinks and expected people to take them; because more passengers have picked alcohol-free drivers; and because more people, like me, decide in advance, “Is it going to be drinking tonight or is it going to be driving?”

I would argue that learning those lessons would probably do as much good, if not more, as some of the proposals that have been put forward by some groups. More than 20 years ago, I received constant demands for a lower alcohol limit—automatic conviction for people with lower limits of alcohol in their bodies. However, those are not the prime people we are discussing today; as my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham rightly said, it is the people who are at twice the legal limit or above. I support his suggestion that bringing down the measurement for being excessively over-the-limit from two-and-a-half times the limit to two times the limit would work.

We also ought to consider introducing sureties, so that people who have been convicted for being well above the legal limit should have to pay money into a fund during the months when they are disqualified from driving, which they will get back if they are not caught reoffending by drink-driving during, say, the next five years. Instead of suddenly trying to impose a fine on them at the end of a period, there would be money in the bank that they would get back if they showed that their alcoholism, or other behaviour, could be controlled.

I will end my brief contribution by saying to the Minister that I intend today to put down some written questions on one part of the road environment that I know he is familiar with. I do not ask him to answer these questions now, but I shall be asking about the contrast between pelican and puffin crossings, and particularly whether it is right to allow any local highway authority to maintain and keep any pelican crossing with multi-lane approaches.

We have only to look at some of the pelican crossings around Westminster to see the dangers of such crossings. I will ask the Minister whether any highway authority is installing pelican crossings now and, if they are, whether they should be required to obtain his permission to put in a pelican crossing rather than a puffin crossing.

We all know that most of us are doing the things that we learned 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Well, 10, 20 or 30 years ago, we were not aware of the dangers of pelican crossings compared with puffin crossings. The Safer Roads Foundation, with Michael Woodford, which has the support of the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety, has raised this issue. It has used research from the Transport Research Laboratory, and I think that it is time that we in Parliament put pressure on local highway authorities, through the Minister, and say to them, “No more pelican crossings, and those that do exist should not be renewed as pelican crossings. And if you intend to put in a pelican crossing, explain why you think that it is going to be safer than putting in a puffin crossing.” It is time that we took this automatic way of reducing risks and reducing the casualties associated with those risks.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Mr Dobbin. You seem to have drawn the short straw again in having me in one of these debates.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) on securing this debate. Road safety is an issue that has long been close to my heart. The UK is a world leader in road safety. Our statistics show fewer road deaths per million population than in almost any other EU country. Road deaths in the UK are lower by almost a factor of four than in the United States, and they are also lower than in Germany or France. From 2011 to 2012, the number of people killed in road accidents reported to the police decreased by 7.7% to 1,754, which is the lowest figure on record. The number of casualties also fell by 4%, including a reduction in the number of people seriously injured on our roads. However, there is no room for complacency. Every death and serious injury is a tragedy, and it remains vital to reduce the number of people who are killed or seriously injured on the UK’s roads. Even one death on our roads is too many.

Many of the issues that my hon. Friend raised about sentencing and penalties are matters for the Ministry of Justice; it would probably expect me not to encroach too far on to its territory, but I hope that there can be an engagement between the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Transport and my hon. Friend, to consider how we can review some of these sentences and penalties. I am assured that all penalties are constantly under review in the light of experience.

I turn now to drink-driving and repeat offenders. I share my hon. Friend’s concerns about the impact of drink-driving. My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) outlined his own involvement in dealing with this issue. I must admit that I have not thought about it for very long, but his idea of a surety that could be built up before being returned to a driver if they are successful in not drinking and in meeting the medical requirements imposed on them seems—at the outset—to be a sensible idea. I also note the points that he made about puffin crossings. I have had a meeting with him and with those who have produced a very useful video that shows some of the dangers faced by people using the old pelican crossings with multi-lane approaches.

We have a proven strategy for tackling drink-driving and repeat offenders, which combines legislation, enforcement, engineering and communications. We work closely with the police and other organisations on education, and on communicating drink-drive messages in a consistent way. As a result, there has been a step change in public attitudes to drink-driving. Indeed, the current generation of young people regard drinking and driving as a complete no-no.

Since 1979, drink-driving casualties, deaths and serious injuries have fallen dramatically. There has been an almost sixfold reduction in the number of people killed in drink-drive related accidents and a similar drop in seriously injured casualties. In 2011, we saw the lowest level of drink-driving fatalities since detailed reporting began. Provisional figures suggest that the number of people killed in drink-drive accidents in 2012 increased by 17% on the previous year, from 240 to 280. However, that estimate is provisional; it is based on a limited sample of data and will be finalised next year when a more complete sample is available. The provisional sample is based on a large degree of uncertainty and there have been significant revisions in previous years.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

This extra, helpful suggestion is probably more for the Department of Justice than the courts. When there is an inquest into or a prosecution resulting from a death through over-the-limit drink-driving, might I suggest that inquiries should be made and presented to the court about where the person was drinking, who knew they were drinking, who knew they were driving and whether those people did anything to dissuade the person from driving after heavy drinking?