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11.28 am
Sir Nicholas Scott: With the leave of the House, I shall speak briefly. First, I wish to apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe), who has left the Chamber briefly to respond to a green card that has been delivered to him. Secondly, I wish to express my gratitude to all those who have played a part in the progress of the legislation to this stage. I am grateful for that unanimous support, because we are tackling an important issue.
I know that the House is rightly wary of the excessive use of secondary legislation instead of primary legislation, but on this matter secondary legislation is essential. Indeed, if there are further developments and scams of one sort or another and gaps are found, it should be possible speedily to plug them with further secondary legislation.
I repeat my gratitude to the House for the support that I have had and ask it to give the Bill a Third Reading.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West):
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The greatest advance in road safety in recent years is the escape from the attitude towards driving of the early part of this century, which was characterised by Toad of Toad Hall figures, who delighted in the speed and power of motor vehicles. We have changed to defensive driving and now drive our vehicles in a good-mannered way, seeking to avoid problems to other users, particularly injuries and death. I am sad to say that bull bars have reversed that trend.
The case made for bull bars started in Australia, where they were designed as 'roo bars--short for kangaroo--to prevent kangaroos from being scooped up by the sloping bonnets of vehicles on impact and going into the passenger's space. They are now unpopular in Australia; they have been banned and replaced by a clever device that is based on high frequency sound, which is designed to shoo away kangaroos. A similar problem is being dealt with in a similar way in Sweden, which has the highest number of accidents involving impact with animals.
Now bull bars are being sold in this country in the belief that they prevent disabling and trivial damage to the fronts of vehicles. They are also being sold because they are aggressive in appearance and will intimidate other road users with the message, "This vehicle is tougher, harder and stronger than you. Keep out of my way." They have also become a declaration of the life style of the country person and the generation who had Tonka cars when they were young--cars with chunky, large wheels. They have a tendency to fall for bull bars in the pursuit of a fashion image.
The case against bull bars is proved and cannot be questioned. Every safety organisation and group of independent scientists, particularly in this country, Germany and Australia, has said that the rigid metal structure concentrates and multiplies the force of impact at the level of a child's head and vital organs.
Hon. Members will be familiar with the stiletto heel syndrome with which we were familiar in the 1950s when seven stone young women were wrecking the floors of dance halls that had survived for a century because,as they pirouetted on the tiny heel, their weight was changed from that of a young woman to that of a fully grown elephant and they bored sixpence-sized holes in the floor. Exactly the same physics is at work when a bull bar hits the head of a child. Not only does the bar, which might weigh about 100 lb, hit the child but it has the force of the vehicle behind it, all concentrated in a tiny area on the circumference of the bar's rim. Research proves that the bars change trivial accidents into serious accidents and serious accidents into fatal accidents. In Australia,the Madymo simulation proved that the bars changed the direction of the fall of pedestrians who were hit and consequently increased the danger of deadly head injuries.
The campaign against bull bars on four-by-fours has had some success. A firm on the borders of my constituency, which employs some of my constituents, manufactures bull bars. Nearly a year ago, it said that it had lost 50 per cent. of its sales. I told the company that
sales should go down because there would be fewer deaths and injuries, but that I would like it to diversify into other, safety areas--there is a great market in safety. I take no joy in the fact that there might be a threat to the jobs of my constituents, but the lives of young children are far more important.
Manufacturing companies have altered the bars' image by changing the name from the aggressive bull or nudge bar to the protector bar. They are now concentrating on selling them to owners of vans, with some degree of success. The term protector bar is deceptive. Research proves it to be entirely inappropriate, but some van drivers feel that they are under threat because they have no engine but only a thin layer of metal between them and the rest of the road traffic. Manufacturers adamantly deny that there is any truth in the belief that those vans are inherently dangerous. Even if it were true, it would be unforgivable for people to make themselves safer by greatly magnifying the risk to other road users, including pedestrians and cyclists.
All the research has proved that bull bars fitted on four-by-fours or vans increase the severity of injuries and multiply the number of deaths not only for the people who are hit but for the passengers and drivers of the vehicles on which they are fitted, for reasons that we all understand. Bull bars stiffen the fronts of vehicles and destroy the vital controlled shock absorption that is designed into vehicle fronts. The forces of the crash are transferred from the vehicle and the impact hits the bodies of those inside, increasing their injuries.
Bull bars also interfere with the operation of air bags because the sensors are put out. The bags can inflate unnecessarily, but may well not be activated when they are required in a smash. By wrecking the aerodynamic profile--they alter what are known as the laminar boundary layers--the weight and the drag of the vehicle are increased, thus adding greatly to fuel costs,air pollution, tyre wear and making handling more difficult.
Few studies have been carried out on the extra injuries caused to passengers in vans, but studies in Australia showed that no extra safety is to be gained by the use of bull bars. In detailed studies in Australia it was found that injuries were likely to increase as the force was concentrated into a smaller area. In one accident examined, the bull bar changed shape and inflicted injuries to the top part of the body of many people in the van.
Virtually everyone is in favour of the Bill, except those who want to use bull bars--a declining group--and those who have a vested interest in profiting from them.The organisations that support the Bill include the Royal Automobile Club, Automobile Association, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, the Pedestrians Association, Headway--an organisation for head injuries--the Cyclists Public Affairs Group, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Child Accident Prevention Trust and the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety.
Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West):
Does it not seem strange that insurers are the one group missing from that list? Would it not seem sensible for them to take into account the fact that third-party costs that may arise out
Mr. Flynn:
I have good news on that front as I wrote 18 months ago to every insurance firm in the country and although I received a fairly negative response at that time, since then one insurance organisation, CGA Direct, has said that it will not insure any vehicles fitted with bull bars and Norwich Union, Eagle Star, Cornhill and others have taken action to waive the policies. That has become a major issue among insurance companies.
There is good news also on the newspaper front. Vigorous campaigns have been conducted by Wales on Sunday, the Northern Ireland Sunday Life, the Nottingham Herald and Post, the Evening Chronicle and the Daily Express--the Express is not a newspaper that I have praised before, but it has printed a splendid series of articles inviting its readers to nominate uses for dead bull bars. It received more than 100 entries. Most prominent of all have been The Independent and The Independent on Sunday and Christian Woolmar's long campaign.
There are distinguished supporters of the campaign to ban bull bars. Anneka Rice, Roger Cook and a lady who I cannot mention by name but who has some influence in the royal parks have all removed bull bars from their vehicles. They have responded to my letters. There has been a response also by many hon. Members, some of whom are in the Chamber. Some of them have views that would lead others to think that they would not necessarily support proposals related to defensive driving. For many weeks I have not seen a bull bar in the car park, where 27 were once assembled.
The Bill is straightforward. The intention behind it is that no person shall use on a road a motor car to which a bull bar is attached. It sets out suggested sentences--prison sentences and a maximum fine at the appropriate level. There is a similar Bill in the other place and there is activity in the European Parliament.
A letter was sent to the Minister on 24 May 1995, and it is of some significance. It was written by an EU Commissioner, who suggested three approaches, which might be the subject of detailed discussion today. There is a view that was supported by The Mail on Sunday in a headline that declared that Britain had won an EU ban on bull bars. Sadly that is not true. There is a dispute over who should be responsible for introducing such a ban.
The Commissioner stated that there were three ways in which the Government could ban bull bars. He said that if they were not fitted as part of the original European type approval, owners could be compelled to remove them because they would be breaking the law. Secondly, there is the safeguard clause within the framework directive for European type approval. It allows member states to introduce a temporary ban on registration if bull bars are considered to be a serious risk to road safety. I believe that a temporary ban would become inevitably a permanent ban. The third approach is to prohibit bull bars on vehicles that cross borders from one member state to another, under articles 30 and 36. That would be a powerful weapon in reducing the number of bull bars on vehicles.
It has been suggested that the Commission no longer takes seriously the three approaches to which I have referred. Accordingly, I ask for confirmation that it does
take them seriously. By coincidence, the RAC met the Commission on Monday. In a letter to me, it reports that it is adamant that the three courses of action are accurate and can be adopted unilaterally by the United Kingdom. That view has been supported by the Commission and made known to two Select Committees that visited the Commission in the past six weeks, the Select Committees on Transport and on European Legislation.
One reason that the Government are advancing for taking no action is that they are waiting for the results of research undertaken in 1994. If the Minister has examined the findings of that research, I hope that he will agree that a report has been much delayed and that it may be better if a report is never produced as it would not be worth the paper on which it was written. Disastrously unscientific methodology was employed. It constitutes a voluntary and amateurish exercise. Accidents were reported haphazardly and chaotically.
11.29 am
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