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Road Safety Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for the Commons amendments on level crossings. We have had long discussions about them and I think that they are really good. I am pleased about the way in which Network Rail has accepted them and I am sure that it will be a good step forward. I worry still about these penalties—as the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, said, there have been 2,000 incidents of bridge-bashing. People think that you just get delayed in your train for half an hour until the engineer comes, looks at it and says it is all right. However, let us take the scenario of a lorry hitting a steel-deck bridge and moving it six inches sideways towards the track just before a high-speed train goes over it. We are talking about hundreds of potential deaths—especially if a train is going in the other direction. It may not happen often—I hope it never happens—but there is a need for a deterrent. We are not talking about careful driving here; we are talking about intent. Not to check the height of your lorry or to wriggle through half barriers to save a few minutes is done with intent and sometimes it will go wrong. In these circumstances, custodial sentences should certainly be possible. The deterrent does not exist at present, as the evidence of the number of incidents given by the noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, surely shows. I hope that my noble friend can put my mind at rest and agree that the deterrent must dramatically increase before we have a serious accident.