Clause 20 - Breach of requirements relating to children and seat belts
Road Safety Bill
10:15 am
Mr David Jamieson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport; Plymouth, Devonport, Labour)
The clause amends part 1 of schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 so as to increase the punishment for an offence under section 15(4) of the Road Traffic Act 1988, which concerns driving a motor vehicle in contravention of seat belt requirements in respect of a child carried in the rear seat of a vehicle, from a level 1 fine on the standard scale of £200 to a level 2 fine of £500. This means that the penalty on conviction for a seatbelt-wearing offence in respect of a child in a rear seat will be the same as that in respect of a child occupying a front seat.
I refer briefly to our previous debate. The law will never be able to get rid of human error, but we can take action to reduce its effect in a crash. That is why we have taken measures such as those concerning airbags, seatbelts, front-end crumple zones and improved engineering of cars and roads: so that when somebody inadvertently makes an error, it does not result in death or injury. We have been moving toward that approach in recent years. We have to accept that human beings are all frail and will still make errors when driving cars, whereas, these days, the likelihood that the mechanical failure of a vehicle will cause a crash is low.
It is important that we concentrate on issues such as the wearing of seatbelts, which has gradually gone up in this country since they were introduced. That has had a substantial effect on the number of casualties inside vehicles, particularly with children. We could have a long argument and do some academic research of great import as to whether it is more dangerous for a child to be in the front or the back of a vehicle, but what purpose would that debate have?