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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I strongly support this extremely sensible amendment. Where a vehicle is stationary and the engine is switched off, that vehicle is clearly not being driven, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, pointed out. As was said by a number of noble Lords in Committee, an individual who has been able to let his family or his firm know that he is stuck in a 10-mile traffic jam is going to be a much safer driver when he finally emerges from it than a driver who has not been able to let anybody know and who drives fast to make up speed in case his family believes that something untoward has happened to him. A cynic might point out that the police are in practice extremely unlikely to be able to identify and charge anybody who is stuck in a 10-mile traffic jam, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said. They would not be able to get through for a start. But that is not the point. We must look at the principle of the matter. The principle of the amendment is absolutely right.