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Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, of course I must support this amendment in so far as I heard mention of the words "pilot schemes". As the Minister knows, I am terribly keen on enabling the introduction of pilot schemes. The amendment we discussed earlier was perhaps a better one, but there are aspects of this one that are quite interesting. I certainly hope that the Minister will meet with us over the next few days to discuss what could be done. If anything, this amendment may be too prescriptive and it may be preferable to introduce a form of enabling legislation along the lines we talked about on my earlier amendment.
If the results due next year of the department's review highlight the need for a pilot scheme, we will have missed the opportunity to provide for it in this legislation. That is yet another argument for introducing a form of enabling provision. But as I said when speaking to my amendment, it is not the words but the principle that we are keen for the Minister to accept.
Lord Davies of Oldham: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for moving the amendment, and the offer of a meeting from the noble Baroness of course delights me. I happen to be busy in London on Friday and therefore would be delighted to meet her and the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, at five o'clock in the afternoon if that is mutually convenient. If not, we will have to postpone it to a slightly later date, and I shall work towards an arrangement. I shall be happy to
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discuss these issues further but, as the House will recognise, my role today is to deal with the amendment.
The noble Earl understands the principle in regard to these issues. I hope that I successfully adumbrated them in Committee; namely, that the Government want to ensure that graduated learning happens before the test. The amendment, as the noble Earl explained, is directed at the period before someone is issued with a provisional licence. That is a sticking point because it would require a new driver to pass an initial test of competence prior to driving on the road.
I have to say to the noble Earl that we are in fundamental disagreement about the best way of equipping people to learn competence on the road. I am not sure what the test would seek to assess at such an early stage. It could not assess practical competence on the road because, by definition, the individual concerned would not have had any practical experience, and we believe that practical experience on the road is fundamental to the process of learning to drive. All research shows that those who have more practice do better and that there is nothing to match the experience of being behind the wheel—suitably supervised, of course, as all learner drivers must be.
Let me say en passant that learner drivers do not comprise a high accident statistic. That should not come as a surprise to anyone in the House as we know that learner drivers drive under supervision. We do not have significant accident rates of people who are learning to drive under the supervision of a driving instructor—although most driving instructors will often indicate that they are somewhat surprised when things do not happen in the way the statistics indicate.
I am not in favour of making people take the driving theory test or some other form of assessment before getting a provisional licence. As the noble Earl will recognise, our theory test has two elements to it; that is, knowledge and understanding of the Highway Code and other matters relating to safe driving; and a hazard perception skills test which uses film clips of real driving. I continually offer an open invitation to noble Lords to participate in that test. They will take it under my strict supervision—not that I am any authority on the test at all but I had the good fortune to sail through it with flying colours—and woe betide anyone who sits the test in my company and achieves a lower score. Nevertheless, everyone is very welcome to join me on that account.
It would be an obvious problem to say to some people that they cannot have a provisional licence without taking a preliminary test when that is not the general rule. That is the problem with the pilot. The noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, has emphasised the virtue of pilots—that is fine—but the problem with a pilot in this area is that the people participating in it would be putting themselves at a lower stage than every other member of the community. That is why we have difficulty with the concept.
Our approach is illustrated by the driver's record, published by the Driving Standards Agency and issued with all provisional licences. It is a form of logbook.
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We know there are others, sometimes prepared by driving instructors. It is a simple tool to measure competence as people progress with their learning. The department wants to understand how the driver's record is working and whether it can be improved. That is why we have invited tenders for research into this and intend to let a research contract on this issue next year. So we are being proactive in this area and I am sure the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, will welcome that.
It is also very important that learning does not stop on passing the test. That is why newly qualified drivers have—as the noble Earl and the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, have emphasised to me on many occasions—a higher risk of accident than more experienced drivers. It is scarcely surprising that this happens. We are running a very large-scale research project on this issue. Participants have been randomly selected in "cohorts" from those taking the practical test. The study looks at how they learned and how they performed in the driving test. For those who have passed the test, it also looks at their first three years as qualified drivers, including their accident record. It is too soon to discuss the results but it will be recognised in all parts of the House that this is valuable work.
Finally, I draw attention to the importance of training for driving for work. There is more training and a further test for driving larger commercial vehicles, buses and coaches, as the House will be aware.
I emphasise to the noble Earl that I cannot accept his amendment but I certainly accept his aspiration to improve the quality and standards of people as they go through the process of learning to drive. We have a series of strategies which are producing those results. On that basis, I hope he feels reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.
7.15 pm
The Earl of Dundee: My Lords, I thank the Minister for his remarks. The central point at the back of what we are discussing is the inconsistency concerning young drivers: 17 to 21 year-olds comprise 10 per cent of licence holders but account for 20 per cent of crashes. Many of us believe that pilot schemes are an effective way of tackling the problem, as my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes reminded us when she brought forward her very good amendment earlier. For these pilots are able to investigate a variety of expedients, including graduated learning, here discussed, and the system of P-plates for young drivers which my noble friend Lady Gardner advocates.
There may be very little between the Minister and myself on this issue. I believe from his remarks that he continues to support the whole idea of graduated learning, although he may take exception—and perhaps have good reason for so doing—to my proposal to begin graduated learning before the provisional licence is issued. There is no particular reason why graduated learning should begin there. At the same time, it is quite logical that it should. Yet if
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the Minister brings forward his own scheme to encourage better driving at different stages, then he has achieved the same purpose.
However, what many of us consider more important than anything else in the interest of saving lives is the resolve to take action on the evidence of the anomaly before us. Certainly we await the department's report with great interest. I shall study what the Minister has said and may well return to the matter at Third Reading. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Earl Attlee moved Amendment No. 66:
"REGULATIONS
(1) The Road Traffic Act 1988 (c. 52) is amended as follows.
(2) In section 41 (regulation of construction, weight, equipment and use of vehicles), after subsection (2), insert—
"(2A) The Secretary of State's data port."
(3) After subsection (3) insert—
"(4) "The Secretary of State's data port" means an electrical connector fitted to a vehicle which, when connected to other suitable components, will provide data that reveals—
(a) if the brake pedal is being operated,
(b) if the indicators are being operated,
(c) if the ABS or EBS system is being active,
(d) the input or position of the accelerator control, and receive data that will cause the vehicle to reduce speed.""
The noble Earl said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 66, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 67 and 68.
These amendments concern the future—they are blue skies amendments. As we heard on my Segway amendment, "The future is nearly here!". One of the difficulties with new technology in vehicles is what to do about the legacy fleet. I am not talking about historical vehicles but the previous generation of vehicles. Amendment No. 66 provides for what I call a "Secretary of State's port", rather like a computer USB port, which would allow future black boxes to be plugged in—perhaps even as a daisy chain—as new devices become available. This could include an accident data recorder, a road user charging unit and devices to limit a vehicle's speed so that the driver cannot inadvertently exceed the speed limit. I apologise for not moving my earlier amendment in regard to the adaptor speed control but my amendment about the Secretary of State's port provides a means of implementing it. We have the technology now to prevent drivers from inadvertently exceeding the speed limit. Why do we not use it?
I fully appreciate one of the Minister's concerns about the Secretary of State's data port. It should be done at European level; it is not appropriate to do something like that at national level because the motor manufacturers will want to make all the vehicles,
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engine management computers and wiring systems the same throughout Europe at least, if not throughout the world. It would be no good the UK insisting on a special port. I am sure the Minister has that in his brief.
I suggested at an earlier stage of the Bill's proceedings terminating the requirement to register number plate suppliers. In that case, the Government were trying to control number plates used to identify a vehicle. But number plates are very cheap and easy to make. Would it not be far better very strictly to control the sale and supply of a vehicle's engine management computer? It is a very expensive device, so it could justify careful controls. It is generally reliable, not easily stolen and could easily be made to emit an identifying signal to the authorities. The Dart Tag, used to travel across the Dartford river crossing, is a good example of a very small electronic device that enables the authorities—the Dartford river crossing, in this case—to register that a vehicle has passed.
Engine management computers are very difficult to interfere with; it would be possible to introduce severe penalties for interfering with them because doing so would need special equipment and it could not be done by accident. If we use the engine management computer to identify the vehicle, we would still need the number plates, just for convenience, to avoid accidentally trying to get into someone else's vehicle.
Amendments Nos. 67 and 68 would introduce a choice of two accident data recording devices. I suspect that the Minister will reject both. Unfortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is not here to speak to his amendment. I know that he is very keen on the issue but it would have been bizarre if we had both put our names to each other's competing amendment.
During the debate on causing death by careless driving, noble Lords identified that it is very difficult to secure a conviction. Dangerous driving is difficult to prove; it is difficult to convince a jury that dangerous driving was involved. Very often, a component of dangerous driving is harsh acceleration and deceleration. These accelerations are very easy to measure and record electronically. Harsh cornering can also be measured as a lateral acceleration. Therefore, harsh and inappropriate cornering can also be measured and recorded.
In the event of an accident, a point of dispute is often the signal being displayed. Let us suppose that an accident occurs when someone emerges from a junction, but his defence is that the vehicle which drove into his side was displaying a turn left signal so that he believed the approaching vehicle was going to turn into the road from which he was emerging. That is difficult to prove—it is one man's word against another's. But an accident data recording device could prove that; not only could it prove what signal the driver was attempting to display, it could also show whether the lamps were shining.
I have no intention of testing the opinion of the House. I regard this as an opportunity for the Minister to tell us his thinking about the future, what we can do with technology, particularly in respect of adaptive
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speed control and the accident data recorder, which is the key point in Amendments Nos. 67 and 68. I beg to move.
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