Road Safety — House of Commons, 2018-11-05
Topic: Transportation
Alexander Jesse Norman (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you very much indeed, Mr Speaker We have already taken a tougher stance on drivers who use a handheld mobile phone at the wheel. The penalty doubled to six points and a £200 fine last year, which means that drivers face having their licence revoked if they are caught using a mobile phone while driving. Since 2015, repeat drink-drivers have to prove they are not alcohol dependent medically before getting their licence back. We have also removed the right to a blood test for drivers who narrowly fail a breathalyser test. That has had the effect of denying people the chance to sober up while waiting to take the test. We are also making progress in providing police forces with the next generation of mobile breathalyser equipment, with bids currently being assessed in the £350,000 innovation competition run by the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety To help the police with drug recognition and impairment testing, we have granted £1 million to police forces in England and Wales for equipment, enforcement and training of officers. Alongside that, we announced in June this year a refreshed road safety statement and a two-year action plan. Rather than take an entirely generalised approach, we are specifically focusing on four priority groups: motorcyclists; rural road users; older, vulnerable users; and young road users. At least three of these groups—young people, rural road users and motorcyclists—are continually over-represented in our road casualty statistics, and we have data to confirm that the safety of older road users is a growing concern. Of course, this too will be informed by work from the new road collision investigation project that we have launched, and I am delighted that that will be bringing us more in-depth qualitative analysis so that we can better understand the underlying causes of crashes and road safety incidents We are very focused on the wellbeing of the most vulnerable road users. Last year, the Government published our cycling and walking investment strategy, setting out an ambition that walking or cycling should become the natural choices for shorter journeys. But people will only walk and cycle more if they feel safe to do so, which is why earlier this year we launched a cycling and walking investment strategy safety review call for evidence, seeking views on how best to achieve that. We received 14,000 or so responses from people from every imaginable road-user walk of life, including children, parents, local authorities, police forces and more Last month, we published a summary of those responses. We are still carefully analysing all contributions, but some trends have already emerged. One of those—this bears very much on the concerns of those who have spoken about horse riders—is the fear of being close-passed, which is extremely scary. It should be noted that this is not merely being passed from behind—overtaking—but passed from the front. Working to tackle that dangerous behaviour is one of the themes in our response. I have had the chance to visit and see in action the excellent work of the West Midlands police, and to talk to police constables Mark Hodson and Steve Hudson about the great initiative they have taken with their colleagues there. My colleagues and I are working to enable other police forces to follow the West Midlands lead with some additional support We are piloting safety training for driving instructors so that they can pass the important knowledge of cycle safety on to their pupils. As I said, we will be reviewing parts of the Highway Code. That review will not only highlight how to avoid the dangers of close passing but encourage people to adopt the Dutch reach—a method of opening a car door with the hand furthest from the handle to force drivers to look over their shoulder for passing traffic. We recognise, as I mentioned, that these issues are equally applicable, in many ways, to horse riders. We should be clear that the cycling and walking strategy may have that name but is absolutely targeted at vulnerable road users, including horse riders.