Clause 17 - Penalty points
Road Safety Bill [Lords]
4:45 pm
Owen Paterson (Shadow Minister, Transport; North Shropshire, Conservative)
That was a helpful contribution. One feels for the hon. Gentleman and we should wish him good luck with cautious driving. Perhaps he will shortly endorse our proposal about detection devices, but I will not test your patience on that, Sir Nicholas.
We are all citing our friends and family histories, as well as horrible incidents yesterday on the M6. Much of this is anecdotal, but people have been telling me that as they have reached six points, they are under pressure and are really worried about it. As the Minister said, their lives, careers and jobs may depend on having a driving licence. Our proposal is quite simple. We have done to death the idea of flexibility and attention to the conditions surrounding the circumstances of being stopped and we propose just a little more flexibility to go from one to six.
On new clause 13, there is a slight change in subject. The purpose of the new clause is simple. We have had a considerable number of representations from the commercial trucking industry saying that there would be sense in increasing the speed of heavy goods vehicles on single-lane main roads from 40 mph to 50 mph. I have completely failed to establish where the 40 mph limit originated. That is the first problem. It seems to be ancestral. I can find no evidence on why it was established, but those in the industry think that it was introduced many years ago when vehicle technology was quite different, anti-lock braking systems did not exist and suspension systems were different.
We have established that about 50 per cent. of accidents are caused on single-lane roads, and they tend to be head-on collisions. Again, the evidence is anecdotal. Many car drivers do not understand that heavy goods vehicles are limited to 40 mph. The trucking industry believes that frustrated drivers are queuing up behind trucks and then choosing inappropriate moments to try to dash past them. On roads such as the A9 in Scotland, the A5 near me and the A41 that can be quite dangerous. There is a clear case for considering increasing the speed of heavy goods vehicles.