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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for giving me the opportunity to look into the future and have a perspective that is much wider than our normal humble concerns. I do not always share his enormous enthusiasm for the technology of the future. In 30 years of loyally, and with great reward, driving Rover cars, the only time I ever had trouble with one was when I was driving past an RAF station on the A1 which succeeded in producing an electronic signal which cut out all Rover cars of that year and make that went past it. Consequently, the noble Earl is proposing this engineering monitoring system before a rather prejudiced Minister. Of course, I recognise that as technology moves on, these small imperfections are things of the past and will never happen again. The installation of electronic recording devices to capture data on the behaviour of a driver of a road vehicle or certain functional parameters of the vehicle might bring great benefits to accident analysis. We recognise how that would improve our position on enhancing road safety. The noble Earl will recognise that we cannot tread too heavily in this area without due care. There are human rights issues involved in being able to track vehicles in such a way. He hinted that there ought to be some international dimension to this from the point of view of the car manufacturers. There would certainly be a European perspective on this with regard to the human rights of the individual and the extent to which such devices could be used against the individual, contrary to basic rights. There are problems in this area, which the noble Earl needs to take on board. That is why we are not likely to move with great rapidity to amend this Bill, in any event, in such a controversial area. However, there is significant international interest in such devices. In the United States, there has been consultation with vehicle manufacturers concerning the voluntary fitting of a standardised recorder. The European Commission has awarded a research contract to evaluate their potential usefulness. This research will consider the competing technologies, their compatibility with all classes of vehicle and their usefulness in accident reconstruction. It is a two-year programme, so it will be some time before we have the results, but the noble Earl will recognise that there is activity on an international level which may bring some of the benefits that he has identified. We are awaiting the publication of the outcome of the US consultation on the standardised approach to this technology, particularly the views of the manufacturing industry. The noble Earl was kind enough to recognise the implications of his amendment for the industry. We intend to contribute to this international study and we are discussing this with European colleagues. We have already opened discussions at official level with the French Government, with a view to a joint programme of vehicle trials to evaluate the potential of accident data recorders. This is an area fraught with difficulties; we have many matters to consider. I welcome the chance the noble Earl has given me to look into the future, but he will not mind if I concentrate principally on getting the Report stage of the Bill completed. I hope that he will withdraw the amendment.