Road Safety Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 136:"After Clause 38, insert the following new clause—"    ““RESTRICTIONS ON TRAFFIC ISLAND HEIGHTS (1)   Local authority traffic islands built after 1st January 2006 shall not exceed 11 centimetres in height. (2)   Local authority traffic islands exceeding 26 centimetres in height shall be replaced by ones not exceeding 11 centimetres in height by 1st January 2007. (3)   Local authority traffic islands exceeding 11 centimetres in height which require damaged warning signs to be repaired or replaced shall be replaced immediately by traffic islands not exceeding 11 centimetres in height.”” The noble Lord said: Amendment No. 136 draws attention to an issue that has not received great attention. I hope that the Government can be persuaded to agree to the amendment because it will improve road safety. Essentially, the problem is that traffic islands, which are clearly intended to improve road safety, are sometimes dangerous, particularly at night, when they may not be very visible. I refer not only to traffic islands at pedestrian crossings but also to the large number placed in two-way traffic roads, some of which might be quite narrow but are fairly major routes, to divide the two sides. My impression, particularly when driving in London, is that many islands are badly sited. They take up a large part of what is already a narrow road. As a result they are frequently hit by passing traffic. The result is that the lit pillar—I think one would call it the bollard—gets knocked down, so that late at night, particularly in driving rain or bad lighting conditions, only the base of the island remains. It represents a serious hazard to drivers, who may be driving quite sensibly and at a reasonable speed, because the height of the island is such that it causes damage to a vehicle even if it only hits it a glancing blow. Many traffic islands, even on the same stretch of road, vary enormously in width. Some are narrow and some may be three, four or even five times as wide. So, while the driver is going down the road carefully avoiding the narrow ones, he suddenly finds another one—again, it may be very badly lit at night—that protrudes into the traffic lane itself and can cause accidents. My main concern is that many of these islands are hit as they do not have warning lights. If you drive around London at night—I did last night—over a distance of some five or six miles you will pass no fewer than three islands without warning lights. The local authorities are not sufficiently vigilant, and in some cases are positively negligent, in replacing the warning lights. I frequently pass one notorious case in Bermondsey, which is, I believe, in the Southwark Council area. It constantly fails, perhaps for days on end, to have any warning light on the island. It was recently replaced, but the wrong way around. It is not a trivial matter because—and this is the purpose of my amendment—some islands are taller than the axle level of a car. If a car hits an island in those circumstances it not only stops dead but the driver may well also be killed. They are tank traps, so we should take some action to reduce the number of such islands. With my Treasury halo—the noble Lord opposite will remember—although somewhat tarnished over the years, I have an interest in the costs of this operation. I have phrased the amendment modestly to suggest that there should be a limit on the height of new islands built, and, secondly, extremely high and very dangerous islands of the kind I have described should be replaced by, say, January 2007. In addition, the islands that have been hit should be mended. That is very modest given the danger involved. It may well be argued that this is a matter for local authorities, but it is clear that these islands are put up in an incredibly haphazard way by local authorities. There is no uniformity within local authorities on the height and width of islands. You can see huge variations within a few hundred yards. There is a case for including reasonable guidelines in legislation. It is extraordinary that traffic islands, particularly those that pose a danger at night, are not outlined by a white line. The cost of doing that must be minimal. Such traffic islands are not readily seen at night, particularly if the light has been damaged and not replaced, yet the cost of outlining their edges in white to make them more visible would be very small and would certainly be justified. I hope that I can persuade the Minister to be sympathetic towards the proposal and to agree that in this respect we could improve the level of road safety at very little cost. I beg to move.