In December I wrote about the British government launching a Road safety statement: working together to build a safer road system the proposals cover a wide range of road safety measures including learners being allowed to take a motorway driving lesson with an approved driving instructor in a dual controlled car. You may have noticed that I was not particularly enthusiastic about this proposal and I have received some comments about this from people puzzled as to why I was not applauding this triumph from the rooftops. After all, it is something that I have been involved in championing for many years.
There are two simple reasons for the suppressed excitement: cynicism and history. The cynicism is partially due to the fact that we have been down the path of ‘this road safety reform will happen’ before, only to have our hopes dashed. History explains why. Let us look, for instance, at the depressingly tardy tale of seatbelts and their introduction.
It is hard, looking back, to remember just how tough it was to introduce this reform – or to believe that the motoring world ever disputed the wisdom of seatbelts. Belting up is now second nature to most of us but it took years of campaigning to get the first law on the statute books. Can you credit a time when seatbelts weren’t part of our lives? Yet they weren’t.
Let’s look at the story, from the start. In 1966 legislation made it compulsory for all new cars to have seatbelts fitted, but it was not until 1991, 25 years later, that it became compulsory for all car occupants, including back seat passengers, to wear one.
While belts were compulsory in new cars from ’66, it was 1974 before the then Government introduced legislation to make wearing them compulsory where fitted. However, the Bill was dropped when Parliament was dissolved for a General Election.
The then Labour Government introduced a similar Road Traffic Bill. But it failed to make progress. The following year another Bill was introduced but ran out of time.
In the 1975-76 Parliament another Bill failed to make it to the statute book because of another procedural mess up and in the 1976-77 session two more seat belts Bills were introduced. Both failed. The first – in spite of a majority of 110 at its Second Reading in the Commons – died after a decision to abandon it. The second died after a successful passage through the Commons, when it was defeated in the Lords by 55 votes to 53.
Speaking in one of these debates in the House of Commons the raconteur, restaurateur, racing columnist and Liberal MP for the Isle of Ely, Clement Freud, cited a number of reasons for opposing the bill, including:
- I am claustrophobic to the extent that I feel acutely uncomfortable wearing a seat belt and I know that many plump people feel the same.
- If a man is prepared to pay the consequences of not wearing a seat belt, that surely is his own look out.
- The main reason that people do not wear seat belts is that they find them uncomfortable.
In the next parliamentary session (1978-79) the Government proposed another seat belt Bill however they lost the General Election in 1979 and the Bill was shelved.
A Private Members’ Bill to make sure seat belts were worn was introduced in the 1979 -80 parliamentary session. This one was “talked out” at the Report stage in September 1980.
Later in 1980 Lord Nugent of Guildford, the then RoSPA President, introduced a Private Members’ Bill through the Upper House. This Bill failed for procedural reasons. The following year Lord Nugent seized his chance with an amendment to the Transport Bill which introduced seat belt wearing for a trial period of three years and at last the law was changed.
The law on seat belt wearing finally came into force in January 1983 and in 1986. Both Houses of Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of retaining the requirement permanently. Five years later, in 1991, the wearing a seat belt in the back of a car became compulsory.
It took 25 years to go from compulsory seat belts to compulsory seat belt wearing. Perhaps, with that precedent, you can see why I’m not holding my breath for learners to be allowed on motorways with ADIs!
It will be six years this year since the road safety minister announced in the House of Commons that this was going to happen, so I suppose it is anyone’s guess.
Perhaps I should run a book on the date of the first learner driver’s motorway lesson.
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