HC Deb 21 January 1969 vol 776 cc440-52

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Concannon.]

12.53 a.m.

Mr. Dudley Smith (Warwick and Leamington)

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the question of the growing dangers of the M1 motorway. Like many other hon. Members, I use it on my travels to and from my constituency. It was the first of this country's motorways; it is the longest; it is the best known; and in my view, because of the density of traffic using it, particularly at weekends, it is now the most dangerous. In the 10 months or so for which I have been using it consistently I have grown very apprehensive about my journeys on it because of the many horrific accidents I have seen. Every weekend when I go on it with my wife and children I feel that I am taking their lives in my hands. In many respects it might almost be more safe to fly the Atlantic each weekend.

I am not surprised at the considerable number of people, admittedly a minority, who are no longer using the M1. They are taking the old alternative routes because they are worried by what they see, particularly at weekends. I would not be caught near it when the weather conditions are adverse. One takes a different route then, although one can be caught out when fog comes down unexpectedly.

These may sound alarmist statements but I am sure that anyone who travels on the motorway will bear them out. It is my submission that the time has come when the Ministry of Transport should make the M1 much safer and take into account the substantial growth in traffic which we know we shall have in the next few years and which will contribute a great deal to further dangers on it. One realises now that the M1 was badly designed and executed at the start and it should be a lesson to us in the way we build our motorways in future.

The basic safety factors are unaccountably missing from the M1. If they could be implemented. I submit that there would be a sensational drop in the number of accidents. There is much that can be done The recent sad experience of multiple crashes in fog shows how urgent the work is. The Minister of Transport referred to "lunatic drivers" and I support that statement entirely. But, in addition, we have a combination of circumstances which militate against safety on a motorway. I suggest three urgent actions are needed.

The first is to do with crash barriers. There should be crash barriers along the whole range of our motorways and on all future motorways. At the moment, from London as far as the M45, where the M1 turns off to Coventry and Birmingham—an area used by many of my constituents and which I use constantly—there is a crash barrier for under one-third of the way.

There is no rhyme or reason for its being placed where it is. It is surely a matter of chance, if one is unfortunate enough to have a burst tyre or to lose control, where one crosses over the centre and collides with oncoming traffic. I am told that it would cost £8 million to put a crash barrier along all our motorways and it is really on the question of expense that the Ministry will not do it, since only 5 or 6 per cent. of the accidents on motorways are caused by what are known technically as "cross-overs".

But when one thinks of the misery and tragedy it involves, surely life is worth more and the safety of the individual road user should be paramount. The series of multiple crashes caused by these cross-overs would not take place if we had crash barriers. It is true that if one is very lucky in going across and the traffic is light, one can get away with a bad fright or a bad shaking, but with the increasing density of traffic more and more the chances are that there will be a horrific collision with cars travelling at speed in the opposite direction. Too often one sees these tragedies and the dead and dying lying on the motorway.

Crash barriers may cause more accidents—I grant that—but they will be less serious and will cause a lesser number of fatalities. With the number of improved designs coming about, it is up to the Ministry to try to settle on one and to implement it. I believe that the motoring organisations are much in favour of these procedures being taken. I know that the R.A.C. is, for it has told me so. It sent me an interesting item from a book published in the United States, called "Center Barriers Save Lives". The book was published by the Bureau of Public Information of the New Jersey Department of Transportation. It states: With traffic volume five times the national average, New Jersey has succeeded in reducing its fatality rate on State highways from 5.3 deaths for every 100 million miles of travel in 1954 to 3.8 deaths in 1966. State officials feel that the use of median dividers, or center barriers, is vital to the success of any safety program on heavily travelled highways which are limited in width. This is evidence of their effectiveness in another country.

Allied to the need for crash barriers is the question of warning lights. The present warning lights system on the M1 and the other motorways is ineffectual, confusing and largely ignored. It is often ignored because on many occasions the lights are left on accidentally, so that drivers assume that there is no trouble ahead and just charge on. The closest consultation should take place between the authorities responsible for the M1 and the weather forecasting authorities, so that the lights can be switched on immediately there is an adverse change in conditions.

During the recent pile-up many warning lights were not put on. It is ludicrous that the police should be so busy that they have to spend their time rushing up and down the motorway trying to put on all the warning lights. I believe that it takes about 4½ hours to get all the lights functioning on the motorway. We need an overhead gantry system of the kind used in other countries, especially the United States. This should be electronically controlled. There should be large, bold red letters on the warning signs, giving the speeds required, together with some indication of the reason for the warning—either an accident or adverse weather conditions. Once the warning signs have flashed the speed required that speed must be rigorously enforced.

I should have thought that in due course we would arrive at the situation which already exists in California, where large areas of the motorways are under the constant surveillance of remote control teams, who watch the situation on television, and who, by the flick of a switch, can bring the emergency procedure into operation immediately. This situation will surely come about in this country one day, and I hope that the Ministry—which I realise is hard up—will at least give consideration to it. I know the Ministry says that it will do something about the lights in the 1970s, but in the light of the experience we have had only 12 days ago it is time for the Ministry to take immediate action on the question of warning lights.

Allied to the question of crash barriers and warning lights is the need for better enforcement of the law and more police patrols. A high-ranking police officer told me that every section of the motorway is thoroughly policed. There is no doubt that the men concerned do an excellent job—and it can be a most nerve-racking and unpleasant one. As one who frequently uses the motorway I can give a typical example. Last weekend I travelled from London on the motorway on Friday afternoon and travelled back on Sunday afternoon, and during my journey, over about 200 miles of motorway, I saw just one police car.

It is something of a bad joke among many travellers on the M1 that the only time they see a police car is when it is racing to an accident. Probably the police are undermanned and need more help in staffing the motorways. I appreciate that the hon. Member's Department is not responsible for the police, but we know that there is co-operation and liaison between Government Departments and I urge him to have consultations with the Home Office on this matter, because there is a need for the closest co-operation between the two Ministries.

There is also the question—even when we have the extra police patrols—of proper supervision and the need to enforce the regulations. I think that the 70 m.p.h. limit should stay. There are too many examples of dangerous and careless driving on the M1 for it to be abandoned. We should consider the question of further penalties for those who infringe the law when driving on the M1. Anyone who has driven at any time on the M1 has seen flagrant examples of bad driving. There is the maniac driver who roars up behind another car at 80 or 90 m.p.h. and remains about 3 in, from its back bumper, flashes his headlights for it to get out of the way, often panicking the driver of the leading car so that there is the potentiality of a crash.

There is the driver who gets in the centre lane, where one is supposed to drive most of the time, but who drives at 40 miles per hour, and in frustration people break the Highway Code by going out into the fast lane and keeping there. There are the drivers who meander from lane to lane; there are those, and these are notorious, who pull out of their lane without giving any indication that they are about to do so, and those who put on their indicators and pull out at the same time.

There are those very interesting and disturbing psychological cases, the drivers with the death wish who career along at 60–70 miles per hour when visibility is down to a few yards. These surely are the lemmings of the internal combustion age.

I should have thought that the lesson we must have learned from the M1 is that our motorways must be better planned, and better constructed. We must have crash barriers down the centre, and it is much cheaper to do it at the outset, than to have to do it in the long run. Whatever the Parliamentary Secretary may say, I can assure him that that they will eventually come and we shall see the day, perhaps in 10 years' time, when the crash barrier is along the whole length of a motorway. If it is to take place then, why not do it now?

There should be a much wider gap between the carriageways and a wider section between each lane. At the moment, three large vehicles abreast doing 50 miles an hour are potentially dangerous. One of the suggestions made for improving motorways is that there should be a far bigger gap between the two carriageways, to enable any car that spins off to avoid colliding with vehicles travelling in the opposite direction. The big mistake we made as a Parliament when we initiated the motorways was to make some sections with two lanes instead of three lanes. Already this has proved to be not only confusing, but irritating and perilous in overcrowded circumstances.

I deprecate the special effects that we get on certain sections of the M1 where it says that tyre control noise tests are going on. It is no help at all when one has passed, as I have done, a particularly bloody accident suddenly to hear a hissing and shrieking from one's tyres.

I do not approach this in any partisan or political sense. We are all road users, all interested in safety, we all want to save lives. What I submit is that we need a commonsense approach, and the Ministry has a duty to try to make the M1 become the safest road in the country and the best-liked. While I am a Member of Parliament I shall constantly strive to achieve this and I hope that I shall carry the Parliamentary Secretary with me.

1.8 a.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Bob Brown)

This debate is primarily concerned with the general issue of accidents on the M1 motorway, but as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Dudley Smith) said, the problem has received extensive publicity lately as a result of the tragic accidents which took place on the morning of 9th January. I am sure the whole House will have been shocked to learn of yet another series of multiple accidents, and of the injury and damage which was caused. We are all grateful to the hon. Member for taking an early opportunity to raise this problem in the House.

While my right hon. Friend is anything but complacent about motorway accidents, I think it is important that we should get this problem in perspec- tive. In 1967 there were 1,350 accidents involving personal injury on the whole motorway network of the country. This represents 0.49 per cent. of all road accidents. These accidents led to 2,447 people being killed or injured, which is about two-thirds of 1 per cent of the national total. It is true that injury accidents on motorways tend to be more serious than accidents in general and for more spectacular as a general rule, and 119 people were killed in these accidents. But this figure, tragic as it is, still amounts to no more than 1.6 per cent. of all road deaths. Motorway accidents are therefore only a tiny proportion of all road accidents, and these roads are still by far the safest we have.

But accidents like those which happened on 9th January show just how serious a situation can arise if drivers do not take account of prevailing conditions. Perhaps I can briefly comment on some of the complaints and accusations which have been made by or on behalf of motorists as a result of this spate of accidents.

There have been complaints from motorists that the emergency warning lights were not operating at the time of the accidents. The responsibility for turning these lights on rests with the police. I am informed by the Chief Constable of Hertfordshire that over 2½ hours before the first accident happened all warning lights were operating on the approach roads although not on the motorway itself. This was not accidental, it was intentional. The practice of the Hertfordshire police is to use the lights to warn drivers when they are entering an area of fog. But when the drivers are already in thick fog the lights along the roads affected are reserved to give an indication of a further hazard ahead such as an accident, an obstruction or the closing of a road. Later, the police turned the lights on at the scene of each accident wherever they could reach them, and they also used portable accident warning signs, flashing lights and warning flares. I am satisfied that the police did everything that could have been expected of them in what was clearly a very dangerous situation.

Here I wish to quote a few words from the report of a traffic patrol sergeant. This clearly gives an indication of the conditions on the motorway during this series of accidents. … I arrived a the M1/M10 junction. There was thick fog at this location. I parked the accident tender on the hard shoulder of the south-bound carriageway just north of the junction, with the blue light and two-tone horns switched on. I set out four police Accident signs, one behind the other, for a distance of about 500 to 600 yards, interspaced with red beacons and amber flashing lights. This made no appreciable difference to the speed of the traffic which was up to about 60 miles per hour in some cases. A senior fire brigade officer stopped and helped me for a couple of minutes, as I coned across the M10 motorway in a gradual diagonal over about 150 yards. I placed the double blue spinners in the centre of the cones. Several lorries crashed through the cones and continued down the M10 at fast speed. It was a hopeless situation and very frightening. These are the words of an experienced traffic patrol sergeant. For anyone to suggest that in continuous fog he needs a warning light to remind him to reduce his speed to take account of the conditions in which he is driving is an obvious nonsense.

It has also been suggested that there was ice on the motorway. We have made inquiries of the county council and we understand that salting began at 3.0 a.m. on the morning of the 9th, and was completed by 6.30 a.m. The police have confirmed that there was no ice on the road at the time of the accidents.

All the evidence which we have been able to collect about these accidents points to the same conclusion: they were due to drivers driving too fast for the prevailing conditions, in such a way that they were quite unable to pull up when an obstruction came within the limits of their very restricted visability. When I hear of motorists deliberately crossing into the opposing carriageway to avoid an obstruction, or—as has also happened—removing the police bollards used to close a road in an emergency, or driving at speeds of 60 m.p.h. in thick fog, as is shown by the report of the traffic patrol sergeant, I begin to wonder whether we are not dealing with drivers who have so little regard either for other people's safety or their own, that they have no right to be allowed to drive on our roads.

Turning now from the recent accidents, I should like to answer some of the hon. Member's points about motorway safety in general. First, I will deal with the question of crash barriers.

The first point related to crash barriers, I should like to set the record straight on this. Through the Road Research Laboratory, we have done and continue to do a great deal of work both on the design of barriers and on their effectiveness as a road safety measure. In our view, it is by no means clear yet that safety fences on central reservations save lives overall, though this may change as traffic volumes increase. We also concluded that the installation of safety fences on the whole motorway network would not give good value in terms of casualties saved by comparison with other projects. Some of the other projects may be less spectacular—for example, improved street lighting, junction improvements in urban streets, and so on—but we have carefully calculated that they will save more lives and injuries.

It does not help to say, as some people have said, that with lives at stake, cost should not be a consideration. The fact is that there will never be enough money to do all that one would like to save accidents: we must choose between one measure and another.

Mr. Dudley Smith

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that future motorways will not be built with crash barriers?

Mr. Brown

No. I am saying that the development of future motorways will be done in the light of the experience we gain from existing motorways.

This is not to say that we have ruled out the use of crash barriers altogether. We are certainly prepared to put them where particular road conditions make them desirable, or where traffic volumes are very high. Indeed, we agreed in December to install a barrier on the M1 between Hemel Hempstead and the M10 junction, although it is perhaps interesting that this would not have prevented any of the accidents on 9th January. It would of course have prevented the incredible folly of people driving deliberately across the central reservation into the fast lane of the opposite carriageway, but I cannot believe that anyone is seriously suggesting that crash barriers should be installed to deal with this kind of lunacy.

The hon. Gentleman then referred to speed limits, and I was glad to hear that he agrees that the 70 m.p.h. limit should remain. I well remember the protests from right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite when my right hon. Friend first proposed it, and we heard similar prattle from them when the breathalyser test was introduced. More speed limits, more rigidly enforced, have also been suggested. The present warning lights indicate an advisory speed limit of 30 m.p.h., but I do not think a great deal more can be done to prevent fog accidents by the use of mandatory speed limits.

Mandatory speed limits have to be enforced if they are to be effective, and one simply cannot ask the police to chase drivers at speed down a fog-bound motorway to insist that they keep to the speed limit. That would be dangerous for the police and for other road users.

The hon. Gentleman made reference to motorway signals. The existing warning signals consist of vertical pairs of amber lights at intervals of about a mile. They are switched on and off by the police either by a switch on the signal post or by a radio transmitter in the patrol car. These signals are being replaced by new systems connected to the nearest police control centre. In the new system the signal has two sets of vertical flashing amber lights and will show an advisory speed limit or the lane that drivers should take to avoid an obstruction. Because of the different conditions, these signals on urban motorways also show flashing red signals to stop traffic completely.

Priority for the new system must be given to urban motorways without hard shoulders, and the programme is being related to the traffic needs of particular areas. The first permanent remote controlled system was brought into use on the Severn Bridge section of the M4 in June, 1968, and the second permanent system is now being installed on the M4 between Chiswick and Langley. This should be ready for use in March this year.

The whole motorway network should be equipped with the new system by the mid-1970s. We are pressing forward with this programme as fast as technical and other resources allow. The new system will be much more sophisticated than the present one, and as advanced as any in the world. Clearly, in conditions which require it, motorists will have to pay due attention to the signals, which they did not on 9th January.

Reference has been made to the matter of police patrols on motorways. All police forces have specialist traffic departments and maintain permanent traffic mobile patrols. However, Mr. Speaker, I must make it clear that the total resources available to the Police in this respect are limited, and the use of traffic patrols as between motorways and other roads, or areas where accident rates may be higher, are operational matters strictly for chief officers of police. There is no Ministerial authority to intervene in this matter.

Nevertheless, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the chief constables responsible for policing the M1 and associated motorways take the greatest possible care to ensure that these roads are given all reasonable attention by the police, having regard to their other commitments. There are standing arrangements for discussing problems and tactics, and to ensure maximum inter-force co-operation. It may interest the House to know that as a result of the effort made by the police during 1968 on the M1, M10, and M45 motorways, over 11,500 motorists were reported for traffic offences and nearly 500 were arrested for non-traffic crimes. I think those figures speak for themselves in terms of the effort being made by the police.

I should have liked to say much more. It is often said that if we had a stricter driving test which involved driving on a motorway, this type of thing would not happen. But the experience in other countries where this has been tried is that people who tend to fail the test in motorway driving in any event fail the test on normal road driving. It is not a practical proposition at the present time in this country in any event to take people long distances from a test centre to do motorway driving.

It is fair to say that accidents such as those on 9th January demonstrate very forcibly that the overwhelming problem in road safety is to inspire a greater sense of individual responsibility and consideration for others. Clearly this was not done on 9th January.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Tuesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-three minutes past One o'clock.