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Road Safety Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 66:"After Clause 44, insert the following new clause—" ““REGULATIONS (1)   The Road Traffic Act 1988 (c. 52) is amended as follows. (2)   In section 41 (regulation of construction, weight, equipment and use of vehicles), after subsection (2), insert— ““(2A)   The Secretary of State’s data port.”” (3)   After subsection (3) insert— ““(4)   ““The Secretary of State’s data port”” means an electrical connector fitted to a vehicle which, when connected to other suitable components, will provide data that reveals— (a)   if the brake pedal is being operated, (b)   if the indicators are being operated, (c)   if the ABS or EBS system is being active, (d)   the input or position of the accelerator control, and receive data that will cause the vehicle to reduce speed.”””” The noble Earl said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 66, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 67 and 68. These amendments concern the future—they are Blue Skies amendments. As we heard on my Segway amendment, ““The future is nearly here!”” One of the difficulties with new technology in vehicles is what to do about the legacy fleet. I am not talking about historical vehicles but the previous generation of vehicles. Amendment No. 66 provides for what I call a ““Secretary of State’s port””, rather like computer USB port, which would allow future black boxes to be plugged in—perhaps even as a daisy chain—as new devices become available. This could include an accident data recorder, a road user charging unit and devices to limit a vehicle’s speed so that the driver cannot inadvertently exceed the speed limit. I apologise for not moving my earlier amendment in regard to the adaptor speed control but my amendment about the Secretary of State’s port provides a means of implementing it. We have the technology now to prevent drivers from inadvertently exceeding the speed limit. Why do we not use it? I fully appreciate one of the Minister’s concerns about the Secretary of State’s data port. It should be done at European level; it is not appropriate to do something like that at national level because the motor manufacturers will want to make all the vehicles, engine management computers and wiring systems the same throughout Europe at least, if not throughout the world. It would be no good the UK insisting on a special port. I am sure the Minister has that in his brief. I suggested at an earlier stage of the Bill’s proceedings terminating the requirement to register number plate suppliers. In that case, the Government were trying to control number plates used to identify a vehicle. But number plates are very cheap and easy to make. Would it not be far better very strictly to control the sale and supply of a vehicle’s engine management computer? It is a very expensive device, so it could justify careful controls. It is generally reliable, not easily stolen and could easily be made to emit an identifying signal to the authorities. The Dart Tag, used to travel across the Dartford river crossing, is a good example of a very small electronic device that enables the authorities—the Dartford river crossing, in this case—to register that a vehicle has passed. Engine management computers are very difficult to interfere with; it would be possible to introduce severe penalties for interfering with them because doing so would need special equipment and it could not be done by accident. If we use the engine management computer to identify the vehicle, we would still need the number plates, just for convenience, to avoid accidentally trying to get into someone else’s vehicle. Amendments Nos. 67 and 68 would introduce a choice of two accident data recording devices. I suspect that the Minister will reject both. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is not here to speak to his amendment. I know that he is very keen on the issue but it would have been bizarre if we had both put our names to each other’s competing amendment. During the debate on causing death by careless driving, noble Lords identified that it is very difficult to secure a conviction. Dangerous driving is difficult to prove; it is difficult to convince a jury that dangerous driving was involved. Very often, a component of dangerous driving is harsh acceleration and deceleration. These accelerations are very easy to measure and record electronically. Harsh cornering can also be measured as a lateral acceleration. Therefore, harsh and inappropriate cornering can also be measured and recorded. In the event of an accident, a point of dispute is often the signal being displayed. Let us suppose that an accident occurs when someone emerges from a junction, but his defence is that the vehicle which drove into his side was displaying a turn left signal so that he believed the approaching vehicle was going to turn into the road from which he was emerging. That is difficult to prove—it is one man’s word against another’s. But an accident data recording device could prove that; not only could it prove what signal the driver was attempting to display, it could also show whether the lamps were shining. I have no intention of testing the opinion of the House. I regard this as an opportunity for the Minister to tell us his thinking about the future, what we can do with technology, particularly in respect of adaptive speed control and the accident data recorder, which is the key point in Amendments Nos. 67 and 68. I beg to move.