Road Safety — House of Commons, 2018-11-05
Topic: Transportation
Victoria Grace Ford (Conservative, Centre-right): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), and I want to make four points in this important debate on road safety. First, on vehicle safety standards, it is great news that the past decade has seen a 39% drop in road fatalities, but that is not just down to luck. Some of that reduction is due to the fact that our vehicles are better designed for safety, which is partly thanks to decades of work between the UK and other EU countries on EU safety standards. As we leave the EU, we will be encouraged by other parts of the world, such as America, to adopt other standards, but there are reasons why standards sometimes diverge. For example, Europe has narrower roads, with more pedestrians, so we build bigger bumpers on our cars, but cars in America flip over more often due to how the highways are designed. We do not need their standards, and they would not want ours, so let us continue to work with Europe on the car safety standards that have introduced, for example, airbags, ABS systems and other more advanced safety measures Secondly, many Chelmsford cyclists have written to me asking me to raise awareness. Chelmsford is a high-growth area, and we need to encourage people to get out of their cars and on to alternative transport. East Anglia is quite flat, so people are happy to use cycles, but they need to feel safe. We are investing more in cycle paths, but Cycling UK also has important proposals to ensure that there is more in the Highway Code to prohibit pavement parking and to encourage more cycle training and the use of the "Dutch reach" whereby drivers have to look over their shoulder when opening the door Thirdly, we need to raise awareness of what to do when a police siren goes off when someone is driving. I spent a day and a night on call with the police over the summer, crossing my constituency six times at top speed with the blue lights flashing, which clearly scared many drivers. We need an awareness campaign about how to get off the road safely to allow emergency vehicles to pass My last point is about horse riders. I am told that Essex has the highest level of horse ownership in the country, but my constituency is almost entirely urban. If one goes on that amazing source of data that is Facebook, one can see that 960 people in my constituency like tennis—like you, Mr Speaker—1,800 like hockey, but 3,800 like horse riding, and they are mostly women. Women are nine times more likely to ride horses—it is the top outdoor pursuit for women. People on horses have a right to be on the road, and riders often have to use a road, even if only for a short time, to get to a bridleway or another safe place I admit to having been an experienced rider in the past, but I got back on a horse this summer and found it absolutely terrifying. It was not just about the amount of traffic, but the lack of driver awareness of what they need to do if they see a horse. Drivers need to pass wide and pass slow, and they must remember that if two horses are riding side by side, that could be because there is an inexperienced rider or a young horse. Finally, please do not beep the horn—that really is spooky for horses. I have been concerned by stories of some drivers finding it fun to be unsafe when a horse is nearby. It is not fun; it is deeply dangerous, and 40 people and over 200 horses have lost their lives We need more driver awareness, and one solution could be to use the bit of time between a learner taking their multiple-choice theory test at the test centre and getting the results. All those new learner drivers need to wait for their results, and the British Horse Society has some fantastic virtual reality headsets that will give those new learners a quick experience of what it is like to be on a horse when a car goes past too fast. Maybe we could use that little bit of time to do just a little more driver awareness.