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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I should like to speak in support of Amendment No. 23, tabled by my noble friend Lord Berkeley and which is included in this group. My interest is that for many years I have been a cyclist. I would like to associate myself with the words of the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, and the Minister at the start of our debate at Third Reading. I also declare an interest as a longstanding member of the Cyclists’ Touring Club because those members drew my attention to the matter which the amendment of my noble friend Lord Berkeley seeks to clarify. I agree with my noble friend that it is important to bring greater objectivity and clarity to the offence of bad driving. The noble Lord, Lord Hanningfield, pointed out that the words ““careless”” and ““dangerous”” mean one thing to the ordinary man in the street, but something completely different in law. Most of us know of examples of what we would call dangerous or careless driving and they are obvious when we see them. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lyell, pointed out that in law the carelessness and the danger have to be obvious to a competent and careful driver and must be far below the standard expected of the competent and careful driver. The Minister told us that last year there were 2,970 deaths on the roads. As I have said, we all often see examples of dangerous driving, but the percentage of convictions for causing death by dangerous or careless driving is below 10 per cent a year. Perhaps the number of convictions is low because, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley has suggested, juries confuse the everyday and the legal meaning of the words ““careless”” and ““dangerous””. This is probably more the case, rather than ““there but for the grace of God go I””, which other noble Lords have suggested. To avoid this confusion, it seems sensible that the Bill should move away from these words and say that we have a duty to drive safely,"““with proper regard to the safety of any person who may be affected by a breach of that duty””." My noble friend’s amendment brings greater clarity and avoids the confusion of the different interpretations. I make one further point in support of the amendment, which is about motorists having proper regard for other road users. The Department for Transport has that very much in mind in the work it is doing to achieve a cultural change—a change in hierarchy away from cars—to give more priority to cyclists, pedestrians, public transport and delivery vehicles. With the department’s encouragement, transport officers throughout the country are trying to achieve this through a new orthodoxy in local transport engineering and planning—by reducing traffic speed, by different road markings, by segregation, by different priorities at intersections, by radial routes—and it seems to me that my noble friend’s amendment is entirely in keeping with those changes. What is required here is a bit of joined-up government. I know the Minister is in favour of that and I hope that he will demonstrate it by supporting my noble friend’s amendment.