Hansard

Like Alex Johnstone and Stewart Stevenson, I learnt to drive at a young age off the public road. In my case, it was on a farm. I agree with a lot of the analysis that those members offered about the difference between the test that we sat and the one that my daughter passed two months ago.

If there is anything about the modern test that needs to be changed, it is the fact that we do not do enough analysis and real training in different driving conditions. For example, we should put youngsters on skid pans that have water all over them, because the first time that many young drivers or people who have just passed their test hit ice or really wet conditions, their instinct is to slam on the brakes really hard, which is a pretty scary experience for a driver who has never done it before. Parts of the existing driving test need a lot of work if it is to equip the next generation with the ability to cope with a modern vehicle in the way in which colleagues have described.

I do not doubt that I am like many members in that I have had the most awful experience of going to a funeral of a young boy who lived on my island and was killed in a motor accident. I was still an elected council member at the time. I will never forget the look of his parents on that dark day in Bressay when he was buried. That should give all of us in all parties the clear objective of tackling the number of deaths that the minister and other members have highlighted this afternoon, not just across Scotland but across the UK.

I want to see practical proposals. It is all very well to set up an argument with Westminster, and I understand the political need for the minister to do that. After all, no debate at the moment is complete without an attack on Westminster—sadly. However, it is one thing for someone to say that they want something to happen and for them to demand a change in an approach, but it is another thing for them to propose what they want. I must say that that also applies to the Labour Party, especially if it is just going to support this motion.

The last line of the motion recommends that UK ministers

“develop and take forward proposals on GDL without further delay.”

We have to explain what that means. The TRL research findings that were produced last year state:

“Overall effectiveness of a GDL system is dependent on the number of components implemented, the strength (strictness) of those components, and the conviction with which the system is implemented by authorities.”

I would have thought that that was a self-evident given. For ministers or Opposition members to stand up and say, “We demand that this GDL is implemented” without saying what measures they want to see in it is pretty easy to do, but it is not fair to many people, including all those in the campaigning organisations who make entirely reasonable observations about the need to see something better.

For example, I would be concerned by a complete ban on night-time driving—the minister cited Ireland in that context—or a zero-tolerance policy on alcohol affecting a certain category of driver. I take Graeme Pearson’s point about police officers, but if we are going to have a zero-tolerance policy on alcohol, it has to apply to all drivers.

We might as well lump mobile phones in with that. This morning, I got the airport bus into Edinburgh and I saw a large number of white van drivers with their mobile phones at their ears. On each occasion, he—dare I say “he”?—was steering with one hand. We might have passed legislation on that, but it has not made a blind bit of difference to most drivers’ behaviour. We need to be very clear about what we are trying to achieve and say it in a debate rather than just doing the usual thing of blaming everyone else.

Alex Johnstone rightly picked up on a point that the minister’s motion does not mention. In most of rural Scotland, there is limited or no public transport, so a huge number of people could be caught by whatever measures the minister considers to be appropriate. I will just take nurses as an example. I found the Government’s figures on nurses and midwives who are under the age of 25 and could therefore be caught by a restriction. There are 17 in Shetland, 75 in Dumfries and Galloway, 17 in Orkney, 105 in Ayrshire and Arran, 100 in Highland, and 400 in Grampian. They are all nurses and midwives on whom we depend every day in our hospitals and health services, and they would be caught if the measures that have already been described in the debate were simply implemented without any thought being given to how such essential public servants get to work.

Finally, Clare Adamson made a good point about black-box technology. After all, all young people now carry mobile phones that are probably a heck of a lot cleverer than the one that I carry. The phones always have the location switched on, and young people are comfortable with that. I therefore think that Clare Adamson made a good point about the reality of young people’s attitude to such technologies and how that could be part of the solution, rather than just airy ideas that have no detail behind them.