Anna Sabine MP speaks in “emotional” debate on Road Safety and Young People

Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate today on Young People and Road Safety, Anna Sabine MP for Frome and East Somerset made an emotional speech calling for “serious consideration” to be given to new measures around road safety for young drivers. 

Referencing the dangerous roads around Frome and East Somerset and the spate of recent accidents, Anna spoke of the need for more preventative measures to be introduced. Recognising the necessity of cars and driving in rural areas, and the crucial access driving gives to young people in villages to access jobs and education, she spoke of her “really serious concerns” regarding the safety of young drivers. 

“I have some really serious concerns about [her teenage son’s] safety when he does start to drive.  My constituency has a lot of A-roads, which are windy and fast, and often have junctions off to the side where drivers are trying to pull out onto the main road.  We have a history of accidents in the local area, including a horrendous one in 2023 where two young sisters were killed by an oncoming vehicle.”

Speaking of her campaign for new road safety measures, some of which have recently been introduced to a dangerous junction outside Frome, Anna criticised the lack of council or government funding available to take further preventative action such as the installation of traffic lights. “We can’t put in the kind of preventative measures [-]mentioned if we can’t fund them”

Anna spoke of recent figures from road safety charity Brake that suggest 1 in 5 drivers crash within a year of passing their test. She suggested serious consideration needs to be given to restrictive driving schemes such as Graduate Drivers Licenses, levels of which are already in place in Northern Ireland, and in the UK for motorcyclists with some success. Such schemes could potentially limit the amount of passengers in a car or the speed allowance for new drivers and would hope to lessen the amount of accidents in those critical first 12 months. 

Whilst such a scheme would need to be carefully considered so as not to restrict the access and independence a license gives to a young person in rural areas, Anna strongly believes “it warrants a conversation, because it’s young people who have the most to lose if we can’t get this right.”