---

Road Safety

I welcome the opportunity to debate road safety and young drivers. My friends the Members for Hyndburn (Mr. Pope) and for Rossendale and Darwen (Janet Anderson) are expected to attend the debate, and I am sure that we shall be joined later by other colleagues from east Lancashire. I congratulate the Minister, and the Government, on their record on road safety. We learn from the latest statistics that road deaths have fallen below 3,000 a year for the first time since records began in 1926. What an astonishing achievement. The figures published a few weeks ago show that the number of people killed in road accidents fell by 7 per cent. between 2006 and 2007. The long-term trend shows steadily reducing numbers of people being killed or seriously injured on our roads. Our roads, amazingly, are now eight times safer than in 1966. Road design plays its part, although we all know of killer stretches in our constituencies. Cars are designed much better than they were; universally, they have air bags. We have had Government initiatives over the years on drink-driving and ““Clunk-click every trip””. Those campaigns have made a real difference. They have made us all more safety-conscious. However, one group stands out as an exception: young drivers. A fifth of all new drivers have an accident within six months of passing their test, and a staggering 70 per cent. report near misses in the same period. I am stating the obvious, but most new drivers are young. About three quarters of all new drivers are under 25. Young drivers are rarely out of the news. Only last week we saw on television the news of the tragic deaths of six young people in Leicestershire after their car ploughed into a 38-tonne lorry on a notoriously dangerous stretch of road near Melton Mowbray.