Road Safety Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, for clearing up that matter. He is absolutely right. The keys do not have to be in one’s pocket so far as drink driving offences are concerned. It is a question of proximity to the car and intent to use it. Therefore, in that area we have a very clear illustration of someone who may not even be immediately behind the wheel of a car but is responsible for it and can be charged with a serious breach of the law. That is why this debate is not really about driving. We do not have in law a definition of driving. The question when a driver is in charge of a vehicle has to be established as a fact before a court of law according to the evidence that is put before it at that time. We therefore cannot pretend that we have in law a concept of driving that enables us to introduce amendments of this kind. That is the difficulty. Let me point to the other obvious problem that impacts on this—the development of new technology. I would be sustaining the argument even without this new technology. Some cars are now designed so that their engines stop when the accelerator is not pressed and they are no longer going forward. Whereas some careful, economical drivers switch off their engines at level crossings because they know that two trains are expected, which will take several minutes to pass, and think that they are contributing to reducing global warning as a result, the fact is that you can be driving a car that will take that decision for you; it switches off the engine. Is it contended that because an engine is switched off, the driver is no longer in charge of the vehicle as far as the law is concerned? That would be the burden of these amendments. It would mean that it would not impact on the driver if the engine of his vehicle was not running. All the assertions by Members of the Committee who have stated how important it is to look at the question of mobile phones and their use while driving would have a coach and horses run through any part of our legislation in these terms, to say nothing of other aspects of potential bad driving, by the simple fact that if the driver could establish that the vehicle was stationary and the engine not actually running, he could not be caught by the law that would be in place if these amendments were accepted. We cannot go down that track, can we? We all recognise the virtues that some of the new technology may bring, both in the economical use of cars and the reduction in pollution emitted from them. We know that in the United States there is a very considerable drive towards increasing the development of such cars, and in this country we are seeing an increasing, although rather slower, use of them at the moment. I am happy to give way to the noble Lord.