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Lord Filkin: My Lords, I note that point, which will be given consideration.
Introducing separate policing units was suggested in order to better enforce road traffic law. The short answer is that all police will and do enforce all traffic laws, including driving without due care and attention. London was mentioned earlier. In terms of the numbers of road traffic police, London has just been accepted on to the safety camera netting-off scheme, and police officers will be dedicated to it. We expect that to save many lives in London.
We must recognise that technology can make a major contribution to road safety in ways that 15 or so years ago we would have believed impossible. One should not understand by that that police action is limited. In 2000—the latest year for which statistics are available—official police action or penalty charge notices resulted in more than 10 million actions. That is the largest number of offences that have been recorded to date. There is plenty going on.
I underpin what the Government are doing with the commitment that was set out in the road safety strategy in March 2000. One of the characteristics of the Government's approach is the willingness to make clear statements about where they need to get to in relation to a number of issues so that success or failure can be assessed. There is a target of a 40 per cent reduction in the numbers killed or seriously injured and a higher target of a 50 per cent reduction in the number of children killed by 2010. If, as I hope, we achieve that, it will make a phenomenal difference to
the figures. The numbers are very significant if one adds them up, which, in view of the tightness of time, I cannot do.As part of our strategy, we undertook and published a fundamental review of speed policy, which several noble Lords will have read—it makes interesting reading. The House will recognise that a range of tested road safety measures is available for local authorities to use. They include the very successful introduction of 20 mph speed zones, to which the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, referred—they have been successful—and road bumps, to which the noble Viscount also referred. They have proved to be very effective at improving safety, particularly for children, pedestrians and cyclists. The key to their success is that they are self-enforcing and are activated all the time. They do not need highly skilled, high-cost police.
The issue of cameras has rightly been debated at significant length. We are in the very early days of that revolution—I believe that it is a revolution. They were introduced initially as a pilot but the success of the first eight pilot sites was so significant that the Government decided to move fast and to open up their use to any police force that wanted to enter into a partnership. We expect, within 18 months, that virtually all the police forces in the country will have taken up partnerships that basically allow netting-off to operate. There will be a substantial expansion in the number of speed cameras. They have already led to a reduction of nearly 50 per cent in the number of people killed or seriously injured in the areas in which they have been placed. That is a phenomenal impact. They have also led to an 18 per cent reduction in the wider area in the pilot sites. Their effect is not simply in the zones in which the cameras are used. They also produced evidence for 800,000 motoring offences in 2000.
The noble Viscount, Lord Astor, rightly said that the aim of speed cameras is to reduce speed, not to increase revenue. To put it baldly, the Government would be well pleased if we got no revenue at all from speed cameras because all were being observed and there was no need to fine motorists. They are part of a strategy to shift behaviour rather than to raise revenue per se.
The noble Lord, Lord Bradshaw, talked about netting off for road engineering safety measures. As he will know probably better than I do, Treasury rules currently govern that approach. We are at the early stages of quite a significant shift. The approach has been going for barely a year or two. It will go nationwide shortly and we shall study its impact and effectiveness. We shall review what lessons we learn from it in the wider scope in the coming year or two.
In that context, the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, asked what someone should do if they are unsure. In short, if any of us feels that we are not guilty, we should plead not guilty and take our chances of persuading the magistrate. If we think that we are guilty, it is usually efficient, in relation to fixed penalties, to pay up and, one hopes, shift one's behaviour.
The community more generally can benefit from a reduction in road accident casualties, which the increased use of cameras is bringing about. There is already some evidence to suggest that that is lightening the load on some accident and emergency departments.
The noble Earl, Lord Attlee, challenged us to think about where the technology appears to be moving. He referred to what I believe are called speed limiters or intelligence speed adaptation. This is rather complex stuff but, as I understand it, it basically fuses the technology that GPS devices use to let people know exactly where they are and how fast they are going, with speed limiting devices, which, as the noble Earl knows better than most in the House, are applied to coaches and commercial vehicles. It is theoretically possible to combine those technologies and to know whether a car should be going at 30 mph, whether it was going faster than that and to signal to the driver. Perhaps even bolder measures could be applied. That is what technology allows. These are major potential issues and the department at this stage is undertaking some live testing of how driver behaviour is affected by those issues. I should not want to delude the House into thinking for one second that these are immediate issues—they may well take decades to roll out. However, they are obviously worthy of serious test and intelligent debate.
These issues are not simply for government: local authorities play a significant role, together with the police in what is almost a tripartite arrangement—with health authorities, there would be a quartet of authorities. We hope that they recognise the continual support from the Government to address the problems of excessive and inappropriate speed. They are, through their local transport plans—I was asked about this—required to produce casualty reduction targets. They are therefore already a significant component of those actions.
The noble Viscount, Lord Astor, also asked about the 20 mph zone. Time does not allow me to go into much detail, except to say that there is much more discretion for local authorities to introduce such zones. The evidence is that when they are well applied, they produce significant benefits.
I should also mention speed humps. Yes, they were introduced by the previous government but they are not universally blessed. The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, and I frequently debate them. Next time that we do so, I should point out that they appear to produce significant benefits. I commend the initiative—they do reduce casualties and are worth it for that.
Vehicle-activated signs are another issue. I believe that the noble Viscount, Lord Allenby, gave a rather nice example of a police car activating a sign. The type of vehicle-activated sign that is also of interest technologically is one that can sense when a car is approaching a bend too fast and can signal to the driver. Such things are possible and I believe that they are seen as useful by drivers, in particular if they are viewed as providing advice and information rather
than signalling impending prosecution. Therefore, that is a further example of where we must make a sensible assessment of how technology can help to reduce deaths caused by speed.I do not believe that there is time to talk about some of the demonstration projects for improving safety on mixed-priority urban roads. However, these are some of the most intractable problem areas and they contain a concentration of mix. As has already been said, we know that motorways are not totally safe but they are a great deal safer than most other roads. It is the mixed urban situations and some rural situations that cause the problems.
The issue at heart, as has been mentioned by almost everyone who has spoken in the debate, is the strange disassociation that most of us seem to go in for—myself included—when we get behind the wheel of a car. Because of air bags and seat belts, perhaps we tend to believe that the risks that we face are less great than they might have been in the past; and they are. However, the risks to others are not. Yet we still tend to believe that the possibility that we shall kill or injure someone is remote, and thus it is difficult to believe in the immediacy of such an occurrence. Therefore, we all carry on as though it will not happen.
I believe that the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, argued that case clearly. I did not agree with him for a second, but I considered it useful to have that input into the debate. He expressed the mindset that most of us have at some stage: we are rushed; we are late for an appointment; and we must push on.
I was—this is self-confession time, which is highly dangerous—stopped by the motorway police once and cautioned. I spent the rest of the journey calculating how much time I would have saved by going at the speed at which I had been travelling compared with the speed at which I travelled subsequently. That occurred on a drive from, I believe, Reading to London, and it was not worth the candle. I would have saved about five or six minutes. I thought, "I'm off my head". Yet we have not yet managed to understand that or, in particular, the damage that we would cause to other people by killing or injuring them.
I believe that retesting—voluntary or compulsory—and retraining are both—
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