GIVE LIFE DRIVING BAN

HAVING been away from home for some seven weeks I had a stack of Rochdale Observers and Rossendale Free Presses to plough through.

Without exception each paper had reports of drunk and dangerous driving and excessive speeding with consequential injuries and deaths.

On the Grane Road 26,000 drivers ignored the speed limit, despite the many crashes each year.

The penalties available to the courts are, in relation to the risks taken by many motorists, derisory and quite clearly ineffective. An estimated 1,800 pedestrians have died on our roads since 2014, about 450 a year, when the Government promised a full review of traffic offences and penalties. Total annual deaths on our roads for all reasons are around 1,800. However, with 99.4 per cent of pedestrian deaths on Britain’s roads involving a motor vehicle the Government has instead announced they will look just at cycling offences! Each year two to three pedestrians are killed when in collision with a bicycle!

Yes, those two to three people do matter, and we should all be protected from dangerous cycling, but why is the Government not concerned about the other 1,800 people? Why do speed camera fines go to the Government’s general taxation pot instead of to the police and highways authorities for road safety initiatives?

Why are courts more concerned by the impact of any penalties on the offender than on the families of the victims?

What is wrong with a lifetime driving ban when it is clear that some people are unfit to be in charge of a vehicle?

After all, in East Lancashire some 40 per cent of adults have no access to a vehicle, so what’s the big deal? No tax or insurance? Drunk? Drugged? Then you’ll never drive again, end of story.

Any comments MPs? Colin Hubbard Whitworth