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The Prosser Perspective.... a weekly column from Dover and Deal MP Gwyn Prosser

1 November 2007

Next Monday is Guy Fawkes Night and the next day we will hear the usual unhappy stories about the number of youngsters hurt by fireworks but Monday is also the first day of National Road Safety Week and it’s a sad reality that more young people are injured or killed on our roads every day than ever occur around the bonfire .

Our general road safety record is one of the best in the world and great efforts are being made to improve it further but to our shame we still have one of the worst child pedestrian death rates in Western Europe and that’s one of the reasons I’m working with the road safety campaigners, BRAKE to make our highways safer for young people.

One young driver or passenger is killed or severely injured every hour of every day on our roads and that can’t be allowed to continue. The figures are quite staggering. Last year there were over 800 fatalities amongst 15 to 25 year-olds and in that same age group there were some 70,000 injuries of which over 700 were classed as serious.

If you didn’t know better you could let all those cold statistics mask the terrible individual tragedies that each injury and fatality represents. Most of us will have some experience of a friend or family member whose been involved in a road accident but even if we didn’t – in this part of the world we’ve had more than our fair share of tragic losses and some of them have sparked important local campaigns for better law and safer roads.

When young Jessica Leigh was run over and killed by a car at the Tower Hamlets cross roads in 2002, her family put huge efforts into highlighting weaknesses in the Road Traffic Act and I was able to take their ‘Justice for Jessica’ petition to the Prime Minister and give them access to Ministers and to the Home Affairs Select Committee. Our representations helped bring about the introduction of the Road Safety Bill which includes a new a new offence of ‘causing death by careless driving’ and it now forms part of the 2006 Road Safety Act.

We’ve witnessed a rash of serious accidents on the A20 and the A2 in recent months which I’ve raised with the Transport Minister but the A258 has also claimed its victims and the sad and tragic loss of young Samantha Horne has prompted a vigorous campaign by her family and friends who I am supporting in their fight for safety improvements to the Dover to Deal road.

The Government is committed to reducing deaths and serious injuries by 40% over the next three years but more effort needs to be put into protecting our young people and that’s why I will be meeting with my friends at BRAKE next week to help promote National Road Safety Week, to brief them on the Samantha campaign and to share with them some of the specific safety problems associated with the approach roads to Dover.