Global Road Deaths

Stephen Kerr Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered global road deaths.

Not many people realise this, but 3,500 homes will today have a knock on the door, and a policewoman or policeman will say to the person who opens the door that their son, daughter, mum, dad, uncle or aunt is dead. Some 3,500 people die on the roads globally every day. That is, at a conservative estimate, 1.3 million people dying on the road on this planet of ours each year. That is a disgraceful number.

I have been in this place longer than you, Mr Hollobone, but you will recall that I have form when it comes to being passionate about tackling road deaths. I shall be very careful today, and I hope that colleagues will stop me if I mention something that ends in “safety”, because I do not believe in that description. I think that we should talk about road deaths and serious road casualties, because that brings home to us the reality that 3,500 people die on the roads every day and 1.3 million die every year.

According to the World Health Organisation, road accidents are the 10th leading cause of death globally—the number of people killed in road accidents is just under that for deaths from tuberculosis, which is in ninth place—and they are forecast to be the seventh biggest cause of death by 2030. But unlike natural disasters or disease, this is a human-made problem and every one of the deaths is avoidable—every one of them.

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

We should discontinue the term “road traffic accidents”, because, in fact, that is not the case at all—these are road traffic collisions.

[Mr Sheerman]

I did promise that I would not call them accidents or talk about safety.

As I said, I have form on this issue. Very early in my career, I saw two young people thrown from a car and dying by the side of the road, and I never lost that image in my mind. They had been thrown out of the car because they were not wearing seatbelts. When I came to this place, I tried to do something about the issue. My only successful private Member’s Bill—the only time I have come in the top 10 in the ballot—was my Safety of Children in Cars Bill, which stopped children being carried unrestrained in cars. After that, with a little help from the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who is now the Father of the House, I managed to wangle past him a coalition that delivered adult seatbelts. We managed to get a 72 majority in the vote the night before a royal wedding, and I am very proud that that was the case. We then took the coalition that succeeded in that and called it PACTS—the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety. I still have the privilege and honour of chairing that organisation. After 10 years, we formed the European Transport Safety Council, as regulation was moving to Europe. Some years after that, I became chairman of the Global Road Safety Partnership established by the World Bank.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing the debate and on his excellent speech, which many hon. Members found very stirring. His passion in the subject reawakened in me the memory of a phone call to our home in the middle of the night when my cousin, Eric, sadly died in a road traffic collision. I shall never forget the sight of my father, a typical Scot who did not wear his heart on his sleeve, standing in the kitchen of our home in Forfar and crying.

I want to speak briefly about the privilege I recently had of attending a presentation on stage at the Macrobert theatre at the University of Stirling entitled “Safe Drive, Stay Alive”, which shows young drivers how dangerous the roads can be. All the year 4 and year 5 pupils from the surrounding secondary schools in central Scotland attend the presentation. Frankly, the dramatic production uses shock tactics to hammer home the message about the importance of being aware on the roads and concentration when driving, and about how dangerous the roads are. I pay tribute to the team who I saw on stage: PCs Vinny Lynch and Andrew Starkie alongside Alan Faulds, Patrick Boyle, David Galloway and Bill Taylor. David Galloway particularly deserves a special plaudit. He talks about road safety with the authority of someone whose life has been drastically changed by a road collision. The performance is intensely emotional and moving, so it is hard not to shed a tear throughout the evening. From start to finish, it works effectively to truly convey the impact of a car crash—those two seconds that change lives forever, both physically and mentally.

I will never forget what someone from one of the blue light services said on stage:

“When I go home from my shift at night, and I lay my head on my pillow and I close my eyes, I see you lying in the wreckage of the car.”

No matter how hard the rescuer tried to expunge that memory from her mind’s eye, that is what she saw. It is my view that although it is a shock production, it is so important that the relatives of those who have died, the voices and testimonies of the emergency service first responders, and the victims themselves speak to young people, as it can truly be a turnaround moment in their appreciation and awareness of the danger of roads. If every young driver could see this production and see through the eyes of a road casualty, I am sure that we would go a long way to ending the scourge of car fatalities among young people. I believe that it would teach lessons that would remain for a lifetime.