Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, on the wonderful case he has made for double summer time, which I have supported for many years, as did my noble friend Lord Faulkner today. I shall certainly put my name to an amendment; I might even help draft one. I do not know how we will get round this business of UTCs and leap seconds, but I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, will be able to sort it out for us. As he said, this is terribly important. I declare an interest as president of the Road Danger Reduction Forum. Like other noble Lords, I very much welcome the Bill. It has been a long time coming, and its proposals are really good. But as others have said, there are many lost opportunities. We cannot stop reminding ourselves that 3,500 people a year are killed; I suspect that we all know at least one person who has been killed or seriously injured in an accident. We have to ask what we are doing about it. I support many of the suggestions that have been made today, probably most of them. If one tries to put these accidents in the round, virtually all of them are caused by inappropriate speed and lack of enforcement. It is not just the car speed in itself. We must not forget the pedestrians and the cyclists, particularly on narrow roads where there is no pavement. Something called the fear factor arises—people do not go out, cycle or walk. So even if you think, in your large air-conditioned car, that it is all right to go over the speed limit, you may be causing fear in someone who will not go out. Pedestrians and cyclists have just as much right as motorists to use our roads. I support the lower speed limits that have been suggested. But we must not forget that whatever they are, if drivers exceed these limits, they are committing an offence, possibly a criminal offence, and increasing the risk of accidents. Why are the Government continuing to pussyfoot around this argument about fixed or movable cameras and whether they are painted yellow? I think that the yellow paint was the idea of a former Minister for Transport, Mr John Spellar, who clearly liked yellow paint. What is wrong with random breath tests? If you have not broken the law, you have nothing to fear. The evidence quoted by my noble friend Lady Gibson and other colleagues shows overwhelming support for better enforcement and lower limits. I was interested in the comments of the noble Earls, Lord Glasgow and Lord Courtown, which I summarise as ““People like us aren’t criminals””. That is probably unfair, but there is a terrible tendency for politicians to think in that way. But if we exceed the speed limit and our alcohol intake is over the limit, then we are criminals and we have to be treated as such. My noble friend Lord Simon talked about speed limiters on vehicles exceeding 3.5 tonnes. The Euro NCAP website shows the accident rating of all different types of cars in Europe. There is a rating for safety inside the car and one for safety outside the car. Unsurprisingly, the heaviest ones, which might be called Chelsea tractors, have the worst accident rate outside the car. Since they are probably also the heaviest, it might be interesting to consider lowering the 3.5 tonne limit to 2 tonnes, which would mean that these beastly things would have speed limiters on them. That would be another way of making sure that they obeyed the law, at least on motorways. That is something to consider, possibly in Committee. The two issues I want to focus on concern police car speeding and railway bridges, level crossings and roads. The noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, talked about police cars speeding; Clause 17 seeks to exempt the police and other emergency vehicles from compliance with speed limits. I am very worried about that. While I was cycling down St Giles in Oxford one morning, I was overtaken by a police car that I estimated was doing about 70 mph, with its blue light flashing and hooter going. Everybody was scattering to get out of its way. I wrote to the chief constable and asked why the driver felt that he needed to do 70 mph. The chief constable was very helpful but his staff could not actually find the record of a police car going down St Giles that morning with its blue light flashing, or any other police car. It was suggested that it was probably part of the police driving school and they do not have records of where police drivers play chasing criminals with flashing lights. I suggest that if the chief constable does not know where his cars are, there is something wrong with his system. The second example is that of the chief superintendent, Les Owen, who was caught doing 82 mph in a 40 mph zone on the North Circular when he was late for a meeting. It was lucky he was caught because that is not always the case. The third example is that of the chief constable of a Midlands police force who was caught doing 140 miles an hour down the M1, not with his blue light flashing. I received a Written Answer in March showing that in 2003–04, one policeman was killed and 38 were seriously injured in accidents involving police cars. But 30 other people were killed and another 100 were seriously injured due to police car accidents. It is interesting, because the information in the Answer showed the difference between the various police forces. The wide variation in numbers between forces must indicate something about the instructions that drivers are given because it cannot just be a coincidence. There is an argument for exploring, possibly in Committee, something that would restrict police cars speeding to times when they can demonstrate that they are responding to a genuine emergency call. I have no evidence that fire engines or ambulances behave in this way. I think it is a police car thing—we see it around Westminster all the time. It is sad to have to say this, but they need reining in if more people are not to get killed. Frankly, to have 31 people killed in a year by police cars and 138 seriously injured is far too many. On roads crossing railways, I should like to raise two issues. The first is bridge bashing, which happens when vehicles—usually heavy lorries—hit bridges and get jammed underneath. The trains have to stop while an engineer comes out, because if the bridge had been damaged there would be a serious derailment. The lorry driver sits there or maybe he runs away. Last year there were 2,343 such incidents in the UK and they caused 25,000 train delay minutes. That is a difficult concept to appreciate, but if each train is delayed by 10   minutes, it amounts to 2,500 trains delayed in that way. And that is before you consider the safety issues. I should like to explore in Committee the creation of a specific offence of driving into a railway bridge—there is no such offence at the moment—as well as one of failing to report a collision with a railway bridge, which is equally serious. My third proposal is to make it easier for Network Rail to erect free-standing bridge protection beams; in other words, a square arch in front of the bridge. If a lorry hits that, there is a good chance that it will stop before it hits the bridge. A lot of local authorities oppose this idea, but we ought to explore it because it would mean that the bridge is not damaged and that drivers might take more care. If they hit it, it is at least to be hoped that they will not do it again. A second issue relating to railways is level crossings. As noble Lords will know, most quoted railway accidents are caused either by suicides or by people having accidents on level crossings. By ““people””, I mean road users, who are usually drivers. We could go into all the accidents that have taken place, but two issues ought to be explored. The first is to make Network Rail a statutory consultee for any planning application which affects the amount of traffic passing over a level crossing. There have been some ridiculous cases of new estates being built whose only access is across a railway. People wonder why traffic jams and accidents occur. But Network Rail is never consulted about it. The second issue to be explored is to make the relevant highways authority responsible for the safety of the highway users, so that, one hopes, it would not put up a bus stop 10 yards beyond a level crossing which creates a tailback across it, with somebody getting stuck on it. These issues have been discussed with officials. I hope that my noble friend will be able to look at them with favour. Other than that, I look forward to some interesting times in Committee and thereafter.