Road Safety Bill [HL]

I too support the amendment so ably moved by my noble friend Lord Berkeley. Without again boring your Lordships with stories of my previous railway career, four decades or so ago, when I qualified as a railway signalman, it was comparatively easy to stop road traffic at a signal box. As far as I remember, one flicked an electrical switch. I am not sure how those with impaired hearing knew that a train was coming when one did that, but by and large the traffic stopped. One heaved on a great big wheel and the level crossing gates moved from across the railway track to across the road. In those days you could slide the signal box window across and have a chat with one or two people waiting in the queue. We have moved a long way since those days. People are a lot more impatient these days. I happened recently to be driving in a part of the country where one of those signal boxes is still in place. I noticed that the former gates about which I have just spoken have now been replaced by a half-barrier level crossing. It is a fairly quiet branch line with a train in each direction about once an hour. When I had a brief word with the signalman about life these days, he pointed out that if you kept the drivers waiting for longer than about 30 seconds, they were out of the car threatening to thump you. That is how things are these days. He pointed out that when the train was waiting at the station—the station platform is immediately adjacent to the level crossing—drivers would often stop, see the train was not at that moment leaving the station and zig-zag across the crossing and away. These are the times in which we live. I find that the penalties for that sort of behaviour are absolutely pathetic. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will agree that there has to be a proper deterrent for such behaviour. It is not only Network Rail and the mainline railway system which is involved. It is the Government’s intention—as it was the previous government’s—to finance and encourage the provision of light railway systems. In my former constituency of West Bromwich there is a metro system which connects Birmingham with Wolverhampton. In my last year as a Member of Parliament there was a serious accident on that level crossing. It is a slightly different system than applies on Network Rail. There are flashing red lights to warn approaching drivers that there is a tram in the vicinity. A driver approaching the crossing saw the flashing red lights, looked, saw a tram coming from the Wolverhampton direction and decided to beat it across the crossing. Had he been caught the penalty would have been slim; so presumably he thought that it was well worth the risk. What he did not see because of the houses on the left-hand side of the crossing was the tram which was coming from Birmingham that hit the car and killed his wife. It turns out that the driver himself had both been drinking and was disqualified. It indicates the carelessness of the average driver. As my noble friend said—I paraphrase him—by and large most of the accidents at railway crossings are caused by the stupidity of the private motorist. I think that he was far too generous to the private motorist when he said that. The fact is that 100 per cent of these accidents are caused by the stupidity, arrogance and contempt of the private motorist for the regulations. Proper penalties are long overdue. I have similar comments on bridge bashing. Without going into a great amount of detail, there is a bridge just south of Coventry on the West Coast Main Line at Brandon. Three times in the past couple of years to my knowledge that bridge has been struck by a heavy goods vehicle. The lorry drivers apparently do not know the height of their own vehicle let alone worry about whether—referring to an earlier amendment—the height of the bridge is in yards, inches or metres. I need hardly remind your Lordships that the current maximum speed limit along that line is 125 miles an hour. The carnage that could be imagined if the railway track was displaced by this sort of carelessness is enormous. There are no proper penalties for lorry drivers who misbehave in this way. It is about time that local councils and highway authorities accepted some responsibility instead of blaming Network Rail or the railway industry, faced the fact that it is the motorist who is the biggest danger to the railway user because of their carelessness and legislated accordingly.