Hansard

I, too, congratulate Stuart McMillan on securing the debate and on the quality of his contribution.

As we have heard, road safety week is arranged annually by the Brake road safety charity. Like many colleagues throughout the chamber, I have spoken several times in similar debates over the years. We have heard that Brake goes the extra mile—if members will pardon the pun—on the education of all road users. I have dealt with it for many years; it is evangelistic about education and road safety and works very efficiently with schools, colleges, businesses and, of course, the Scottish Parliament, the Westminster Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

We have heard about this year’s “Step up for safe streets” campaign, which is about creating design-led solutions to make our streets safer. As Brake has made clear, every 20 minutes, someone is killed or seriously injured on a British road, and each of those tragedies is preventable.

For the past decade, I have worked closely with Brake on road safety issues. Along with that road safety group, I set up the north of Scotland driver awareness team, or NOSDAT. We have run more than 24 road safety campaigns in the Highlands and have been fortunate to pick up five Brake campaign awards.

The primary campaign that I launched was on the proposal to introduce a graduated licence scheme for young and new drivers. The prompt for me to act came back in early 2010, when, after a double fatal road collision that involved two 17-year-olds in the city of Inverness, I was contacted by the parents of one of the young people involved, who pleaded with me to do whatever I could to address the on-going carnage.

The campaign was based on the evidence of the eminent Dr Sarah Jones, formerly of Cardiff University, who carried out 10 years of study of Scottish and Welsh road traffic collisions. Dr Jones’s evidence indicated that the introduction of a graduated driving licence scheme in Scotland could save up to £18 million in the Scottish economy. More important, up to 22 lives per year could be saved.

Every week in Scotland, one young person is killed on our roads and 17 young people are seriously injured. Many of them will be permanently disabled or scarred. Education is key. Where education and enlightenment do not work, however, we have to move to enforcement. Those are the three Es: education, enlightenment and enforcement.

There is no doubt that there is a strong voice in support of that form of graduated licence in Scotland. In fairness, the Scottish Government has always supported it. It is, of course, a reserved issue, but do we have the courage to move ahead on this very important issue in the long term, as we know that it will save lives?

We need to prevent unnecessary serious injury, disfigurement and death among our young people—they are our next generation.

For families who have lost loved ones, unfortunately we cannot turn the clock back. However, we can adopt a new, safer, proven driving regime that is aimed at slashing the carnage on our roads and preventing the deaths and injuries of our young drivers. I believe that a form of graduated licence is the way forward. It is supported by Brake, and that message needs to be reinforced during road safety week.

As the American revolutionary author Tom Paine said:

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Yes—but let us do it with road safety in mind.