Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee, 23 Jun 2009

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Official Report 253KB pdf

---

Road Safety Framework

Item 2 is a discussion on the Scottish Government's road safety framework, for which we have been joined by the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change, Stewart Stevenson. He is accompanied by Jill Mulholland, who is the road safety team leader in the Scottish Government, and Ian Robertson, who is a policy officer in that team.

Does the minister want to make an opening statement?

I am happy to go straight to questions. If at the end anything material appears not to have been covered, perhaps I can be permitted to wrap up the discussion then in exchange for saying nothing now.

That is fine. Let me begin by asking for a general explanation of the role that the road safety expert panel has played in the development of the framework.

The expert panel was brought together to try to represent as many strands as possible of knowledge and opinion on road safety in Scotland. Basically, the panel's very open agenda was to try to push the boundaries of what might be achieved by creating a framework that will continue the progress whereby the number of deaths on our roads has dropped to one third of what it was 20 years ago. The panel's aim was to ensure that, as progress gets more difficult due to the ever smaller numbers, we keep up that momentum. Basically, we worked together and tried always to be open-minded and not to reject anything whatsoever at any early stage.

Were any suggestions made by the panel that were not included in the final framework? Why were any suggestions rejected?

I do not think that any suggestions were rejected. I will outline the context in which I say that. We had several meetings at which presentations were made by people from Sweden, the United Kingdom Administration, the Driving Standards Agency and so on, during which we took part in quite free-flowing discussions that dealt with issues that were not presented or formulated as actual proposals. When proposals were brought forward, none of ours was rejected. One of the very good things about how everyone approached the process was that we were able to come to a unanimous view on everything that we discussed.

Moving on to the consultation process, I gather that the consultation elicited only 94 responses, with just 20 coming from individuals. Given that there is an emphasis in the document on engaging with the public, that seems like a bit of a poor response rate.

It is not untypical of response rates in this area of policy, not just in Scotland but in the rest of the UK. In some ways, it illustrates the nature of the issue. People do not take a great deal of interest in road safety in any sort of detailed way. They take it for granted that, when they are driving in their cars, they are safe—they have a sense of invulnerability, particularly if they are inexperienced or young. The kind of response that we have had illustrates precisely why parts of the framework are about engaging people. As you have read the framework, you will be aware that we have made a proactive effort to reach younger and more inexperienced drivers in particular and to try to understand their behaviours. We did that because we recognised the particular challenges that exist around that group of drivers.

To summarise, engaging people in road safety is a significant challenge.

I have to admit that the response rate for individuals is very low, particularly given that the issue directly affects many people in Scotland. Many people will have personal experience of a damaging or tragic incident on the roads and many other people—certainly, many people who speak to me—are concerned about traffic levels, dangers to the public, safe routes to school and so on. Given that you say that you went out proactively to engage people, 20 responses seems startling low.

The rate is not dissimilar to the response rate to consultations on other issues that are not, at the time, a matter of huge debate in the popular media. Certainly, one can expect direct engagement from people who have lost a loved one or a friend. However, thankfully, most people's direct exposure to tragedy on our roads is relatively limited. The challenge is to get to those people and ensure that they understand that they have a role to play in looking after their own safety, the safety of those with whom they are travelling, and the safety of other road users.

You mentioned specific efforts to approach younger drivers. What proactive efforts were made to approach pedestrians?

We did not make pedestrians the subject of proactive engagement.

Why not?

We identified that the key group in terms of contributions to road non-safety or lack of safety—I am just trying to think of the right word for that.

Danger, I suppose.

Thank you. We identified that the key group in terms of contributions to road danger was made up overwhelmingly of young and inexperienced drivers, which is why we made them a particular target.

Of course, you should be aware that on the panel were people who represent quite a wide range of road safety interests and are engaged with and very much aware of the needs of pedestrians and other groups.

Clearly, someone's perception of danger, safety and behaviour that leads to danger will be different depending on whether they are inside or outside a vehicle. Would it not be reasonable to say that a fully rounded perception of the issues could be achieved only by getting both perspectives?

We have produced a framework that leads to a significant number of actions and engagements that will take place in the next 10 years. In developing those, we will be very much aware of the need to engage with pedestrians. In the framework, we have made a number of specific commitments in relation to pedestrians. For example, we are very much aware that there is a close correlation between pedestrian injuries and fatalities at weekends and the consumption of drink. That is not by any means the whole picture, of course, but that is an example of the sort of things of which we are already aware and with which we can engage.

We are also particularly aware of the issues to do with school students in the vicinity of school buses who are making the transition from being passengers to being pedestrians or vice versa. I have been particularly engaged in that issue, as has Alison McInnes.

There is a degree of engagement with regard to pedestrians in what we have already done. As we work up our programmes for the next 10 years, that will be sustained.

You chose to use the mechanism of focus groups with 16 to 25-year-olds. Why did you decide to conduct focus groups only with that age group and not with others?

Because, as I said earlier, that is the group that we identified as being overwhelmingly at a substantially higher degree of risk than other groups. Understanding the motivations and actions of that particular group was especially important to our understanding of what the framework should look like.

The presence on the group of Professor Stephen Stradling, who is a professor of psychology, led us in that direction, to an extent. We understand that the challenge for road safety in the next 10 years concerns not so much building safer streets and improving the technology of cars, bicycles and so on but changing the risky behaviours of significant numbers of people who use our transport system.

Do you agree that many of the people who are at risk now, and will be at risk in the future, are children and young people? Children around the ages of 10 or 12 would seem to me to be an obvious target area, and we have an opportunity to engage with those young people through schools. Has any thought been given to consulting schools and young people who attend those schools?

There is already a significant amount of engagement with schools. For example, Road Safety Scotland's fridge magnet programme has been very successful and the kerbcraft programme has been used by various councils.

We have to be careful not to overlook the role of local authorities in this area of work because the skills that are required in rural areas will be different from the ones that are required in densely populated areas with heavy traffic. There must be a huge element of partnership working by road safety professionals, Government, local authorities and all those who have to take an interest. That will mean targeting different groups at different times in different places in different ways.

I accept all that, and there are some very successful partnerships that work with children and young people. However, the positive step of asking children and young people what their views are about road safety and what they think might be done to keep them safe has not been taken?

One of the reasons for having Kathleen Marshall, the former Commissioner for Children and Young People in Scotland, on the panel was precisely to maintain that connection to her work with children. We distinctly valued that connection in coming to our conclusions. I expect that the new commissioner, Tam Baillie, in developing programmes for the future, will play a key part in influencing what we do from now. The existence of the children's commissioner and their connection to what we have been doing is a key aspect.

Aside from revised targets, can you explain the key difference between the Scottish Government's framework and the UK-wide strategy that was published in 2000?

It is fair to say that 2000 was a reasonable time ago. I would prefer to focus on the fact that we and the UK Government are pretty much working in parallel. The UK Administration is consulting on a new road safety strategy for Great Britain, and a number of the powers that influence that are not ones that are at my hand; they lie with Paul Clark, the new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport. Paul Clark wrote to me on 12 June after we provided him with a copy of our new road framework, and I am happy to give the committee a copy of his letter. He commented that our framework

"provides excellent, well-researched guidance for both practitioners and road users and sets out a clear pathway to achieving real progress in reducing road casualties in Scotland."

He went on to say how the Department for Transport has been part of the work that we have developed in producing our framework; by the same token, our officials contribute to the work that Paul Clark and his team at Westminster are doing.

In our different environments, where there will be nuances of different need, we are seeing each other's needs and proceeding to the extent that we can, and that is the important thing. We continue to have one or two areas where we take a different view, but that is a matter for healthy debate, and I am not going to make anything much of that.

I very much agree with the suggestion in the framework that, as road users, we all have responsibility for road safety. How do you intend to help to meet that aspiration and encourage people to take that responsibility?

We will pursue a wide range of options over the coming years. We should inculcate into drivers—from the outset of their driving career, at whatever age they become a driver—the idea that passing their test is not the completion of the process of acquiring, maintaining and sustaining skills. There are a number of ways in which people can add to their skills and verify that they are still up to the required standards. There will be opportunities in years to come to assess what retraining might be appropriate for drivers under certain circumstances, and we will continue to discuss that.

Drivers are one category of road user to consider. There is a framework within which people can operate as drivers. People need a licence; they have to demonstrate, at one point in time, that they have the skills to drive safely on our roads. Other road users can use the roads without that gateway: cyclists, pedestrians, youngsters and old people whose mobility is restricted are not people whom we will ever test to use our roads. In addition, disabled people, and especially blind people, have specific needs. Those people need interventions that are specific to them. An intervention for drivers will not necessarily help a blind pedestrian with a guide dog, for example, although I presume that there would be a mutual advantage in that they will both be able to use the road network more effectively and respect each other needs. However, there will be different interventions.

I welcome the fact that you included in your answer the very people whom I wanted to talk about. One of my concerns is that vans and cars are parked on pavements, which means that people with disabilities have to go on to the road to get past. I have seen toddlers having to do the same thing—okay, mum should be holding their hand, but that is neither here nor there. Children on their way home from school have to go on to the road or even into the middle of the road to get past a van. Again, that is very much to do with people's awareness of road safety.

You said that we perhaps need to consider the driving test, but is there anything that we can do under the framework to make walking safer for pedestrians—particularly children, young people, disabled people including those in wheelchairs, and people with buggies—given that it can be dangerous and that people have no other option?

There are standards—I am now wearing one of my other hats, as opposed to my transport hat—for the planning of road layouts and, in particular, pedestrian ways. I cannot quite remember the required width. From memory, I think that it is 2m, but I will not be held to that. However, we must recognise that much of the infrastructure that we have does not meet modern standards and needs to be managed in a particular way.

In a sense, that brings us back to the need for effective partnership working, because some of the questions that you are asking me relate to enforcement. In other words, the answer is not to create a new legislative framework that says that people cannot do certain things. Many of the behaviours that you describe are already not permitted or are illegal. A degree of enforcement is required.

Equally, I come back to the point that the biggest contribution that can be made to improving road safety is to change the behaviours of the people who use the roads. The unthinking parker of a van on a pedestrian walkway, whose action leads to people having to expose themselves to danger, is clearly not performing at the standard that we require. We have many instances of unthinking behaviour. Jackie Baillie's Disabled Persons' Parking Places (Scotland) Bill was brought forward with all our support to address a particular problem. I am pretty sure that we heard in the debates on that bill that people who park in disabled parking spaces without due cause are four times as likely as the general population to already have a criminal conviction. In other words, there is a correlation between a person's preparedness to break the rules in one part of their life and a general preparedness to break the rules in many parts of their life.

It may be that targeting can be done.

I do not know whether you are aware that there is a grey area. Some of the provisions on the matter are in UK legislation, but the police can act only if they see someone driving on to the pavement, so often they cannot deal with people who make a habit of parking on the pavement. How can we move forward and do the hearts and minds thing, or indeed make people take responsibility for their parking and realise the effect that it has on young people and others who have to walk on the road?

If I may say so, I am not going to give the explicit response that would make you happy, except to say that some good points are being made and we take note of them.

I make the general point that there are parts of our city streets—I can think of several examples—where parking is permitted on the pavement in marked parking spaces, but they are adjacent to pedestrian areas and the markings are far from clear and not understood. In certain towns and villages—and cities, for that matter—there is huge ambiguity around the subject. That is a matter for local action, primarily, rather than the minister walking every street in Scotland to work out where action is needed.

Thank you. I do not expect you to do that; I expect your views to reflect the problems that people face.

How does the Scottish framework tie in with the UK framework that is being developed by the Department for Transport?

I mentioned Paul Clark's first letter to me, which was essentially the new minister saying, "Hello, I'm here and I'd like to help." The attitude that we are seeing is one of recognition that we face a shared issue and that we want to work together effectively.

By ensuring that our respective officials north and south of the border participate in each other's activities, we will benefit from each other's research and will, when it is appropriate, come up with common views. There is plenty of scope for working together in a common purpose.

You have stated that changes to road safety legislation by the UK Parliament

"would make a massive impact on reducing casualty rates even further".

What legislation are you referring to? What changes would you like to see?

I do not recollect using the word "massive", but there are certainly areas in which we think that a difference can be made. The most obvious area is drink-driving limits, which have been the subject of some debate. I think that Ireland, the UK and one other country, which I cannot bring to mind at the moment, are significantly adrift of the limit of 50mg of alcohol per something or other—per litre, it must be—that prevails across Europe. We think that it would be useful for that to be the limit. In this domain, I always note that the equivalent limit for flying is 20mg. If such a limit is good enough for flying, surely we can do a bit better on the roads. That is one area in which we would like to see change.

Can you give us an indication of the role and responsibilities that you envisage the proposed Scottish strategic group on road safety having?

As yet, we have not drawn up the group's terms of reference. I must ask to be reminded of something. [Interruption.]

That board will be responsible for considering the causation factors for each child fatality.

That is right. Because children are of particular concern and because we have set the most challenging of targets in relation to children in our framework, a report on every accident in which a child has died will come to that board and will be analysed with a view to finding common elements so that we can learn lessons and ensure that they are disseminated and applied throughout the system.

Do we have a timescale within which that group will be up and running?

We will write its terms of reference later this year and will constitute it thereafter.

I have advocated the vision zero approach to road deaths for some time, and I am pleased that you, too, have embraced it. The main target in the framework is a 40 per cent reduction in road deaths between 2010 and 2020. The Swedish road safety strategy, which is where the vision zero approach comes from, aims to achieve a figure of zero road deaths by 2020. Can you state when you anticipate that we might adopt a target of zero road deaths?

The straight answer is no. We invited the Swedes to talk to us about what they are doing, some of which is quite interesting. Their approach is experiencing a bit of a stall at the moment. Even though they are ahead of us, we are catching up and making improvements more quickly than they are. Theirs is very much a centrally directed intervention. Much of their work has been on re-engineering roads, for example; much less of it has been about engaging local safety partnerships and local councils. However, Sweden has a very large number of councils, so practical issues may arise. I admire the Swedes and respect them for setting their 2020 target. However, when we consider the progress that they are making just now, we can see that the target is hugely ambitious.

It is right that we should say that zero is where we have to get to eventually, but the targets that we have set are recognised as being more challenging than the current UK targets—although I accept that the UK targets may be reconsidered. Our targets are challenging but should be achievable in the light of what we know. Zero deaths is the target that we have to get to, but I am not going to rise to the temptation of stating it as our target now.

For a long time, a test has been applied to any stretch of road in Scotland that is considered hazardous: the test is the number of serious incidents to have taken place. Only if that test is passed is it possible to get the council or the police to consider new road measures such as crossings or improved lighting. Is it a satisfactory arrangement that it takes three serious incidents to trigger a response?

I would not describe the situation in the way that you describe it. And, by the way, I do not think that the policy has changed from that of the previous Administration.

When three serious incidents have taken place, you are forced to look into it; but the absence of three serious incidents does not prevent you from looking into it. It is important to consider things from that perspective. For example, we are undertaking a study at Laurencekirk, where the test that Mr McNulty mentions has not been met at the main A90 junction. There are other junctions, and you could consider the aggregate over the stretch of road and get different figures. However, although the test has not been met, we acknowledge the local concerns. Even though accidents are not happening, the junction is difficult. It is an example—although not the only one—of where we have put cameras at all the junctions to record traffic over an extended period to see how people behave. We want to record how many near misses there have been, because near misses do not make it into the statistics.

The test that Mr McNulty describes has been used for some time, and we continue to use it. It is the "You must intervene" test; it is not the "You must not intervene unless" test.

My colleague Charlie Gordon will remember what happened at Peel Glen Road, which is in his constituency and adjacent to mine. A series of fatalities occurred, and it was not until after a number of such incidents that action was taken.

On the A82 in my constituency, between the Duntreath flyover and Drumry roundabout, three deaths have occurred within the past two years. It is only the fact of those incidents that has produced a response from the local authority.

We should not have to wait until such things happen for a response to be prompted. Could a more proactive stance be taken when it is clear that issues could be addressed in order to improve road safety?

One thing that we have done is to keep records of slight accidents, and we have secondary targets in relation to that. Any change in the number of slight accidents is an early indication that there are difficulties associated with either the local driver population or the engineering of the road. You are absolutely right that we have to be proactive.

I return to the fundamental point that the proportion of the accidents where people are killed or seriously injured that are down to road-user behaviour is rising. In other words, the engineering interventions have made a significant contribution over the past 20 years. In that time, we have gone from a figure of 900 or so people a year killed on our roads to less than 300 a year killed on our roads. However, the challenge for the next 10 or 20 years is to address the rising proportion of deaths that are caused by road-users' behaviour.

The A82 is probably the most dangerous trunk road in Scotland in terms of the number of people killed or seriously injured per kilometre—it depends how you look at it, but it is there or thereabouts. There are significant parts of the road where, if a driver of an adequate standard who is exercising respect for the road conditions, traffic conditions and time of day sees someone coming the other way who is going to cause an accident, there is no way that they can respond, because there is rock on one side and a loch on the other. On that road, and a number of other roads, there is a case for engineering interventions that create safe ways to avoid accidents for the drivers who are operating with appropriate skill.

We have not run out of engineering interventions by any means. That is why safety interventions are at the top of the hierarchy of interventions in the strategic transport projects review. The economic interventions are further down the hierarchy.

The traffic light system that categorises road conditions and identifies the worst roads and the better ones has been useful. In analysing the risks associated with particular roads, or stretches of road, would it be possible to come up with a traffic light system that would guide the investment patterns of local authorities and central Government, so that, instead of our having a behavioural focus, investment would be driven by the risk of accidents, or the conditions that cause accidents?

I suspect that you are asking me two things. First, you are asking whether we can present the information that is held by the Government, councils and the police—who are the primary source—in order to better focus the engineering interventions. I would certainly respond to that positively. If you are suggesting that drivers would respond to the information if we put up a sign saying "dangerous road", experience suggests that that would be of relatively limited value, so we would probably not do it.

There are bits of road where accidents happen for a variety of reasons that are not wholly to do with the engineering. For example, there was a long history of significant accidents dispersed along the A77 that were related to the speeds at which drivers were driving. The speed enforcement camera system, which introduced average speed cameras, has made a relatively significant contribution to that. It is quite an expensive intervention, but it is still cheaper than killing people, by a long margin. It is the sort of thing that we would want to continue to use at the appropriate point, particularly when the next generation of such equipment becomes available.

You have set ambitious child casualty reduction targets for 2020, which is to be welcomed. Will you outline in a bit more detail how you aim to achieve those targets?

There are, of course, various kinds of child casualties. In-car child casualties have risen in the current year. However, the number of such casualties is quite small, and there will be variations when there are small numbers. As I said, the group that we will set up will analyse every single accident. We do not know whether in-car casualties have resulted from children not being adequately secured in cars or from other passengers not being adequately secured and therefore impacting on secured children, which is equally a possibility. We need to address such issues.

There are young children who have been unsupervised in environments in which it was inappropriate for them to be unsupervised and have interacted with traffic in a way that has led to their being killed or seriously injured. There are also school student casualties and young driver casualties—drivers aged 17 remain children in legal terms. There is not a single intervention; rather, there will be different interventions for each group, and it is likely that they will also be geographically differentiated.

You touched on enforcing the wearing of seat belts. We must all be concerned when we walk up the high street and see unrestrained children in cars. It seems that it would be simple to run a campaign to raise awareness of that problem and enforce the wearing of seat belts rather more. Travelling in a car without properly restraining children is seriously negligent. We need to raise that issue up the agenda a little bit, and that can be done. Chapter 6.1 of the framework is entitled "Children and Young People". The commitments on page 36 are heavily weighted towards pedestrian interventions. I am, therefore, pleased that you have talked about in-car safety. That is reassuring.

Why do you need to commission more research to investigate the links between road safety and disadvantaged children? It is clear that there is already quite a body of evidence on that; the framework refers to it on page 31.

I have just been reminded—this is modestly helpful—that there will be a focus on seat belts next year, as the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland has designated 2010 as the year of the seat belt. We think that half of the deaths in cars are associated to some degree with the failure to wear seat belts, although it is not entirely clear that that is the case. Using equipment that is fitted in every car is a relatively simple intervention. When I travel by bus, I am almost invariably the only person wearing a seat belt. However, that is just me.

The Department for Transport's seat belt wearing rates for car occupants for August 2007 are on page 78 of the framework. Only 70 per cent of rear seat adults wore seat belts then. At a road safety conference that I attended—no names, no pack-drill—I asked how many of the 300 or so people in the audience had in the preceding six months travelled in a car in which one or more persons had not worn a seat belt. Half of the audience put up their hands. That was a road safety audience.

Wearing seat belts is one of the biggest issues. If we can address it, that will make a big difference. I take pleasure in a suggestion that I have made, which some have viewed as eccentric, about having fluorescent seat belts. Such seat belts would at least enable people outside cars to see more readily whether people inside them were wearing seat belts. Compliance would therefore be driven up and enforcement would be helped. We shall see whether that suggestion is taken up, as it is a matter for the UK Government rather than for us.

There was a review in 2000 of road accidents involving children living in disadvantaged areas. There has not been a review since then, and we need to understand what is happening because the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads has significantly reduced in that period. There was certainly evidence that disadvantage was one of a range of factors involved, and it was not an insignificant factor, but we need another review.

We share a concern about young drivers—particularly young drivers in rural areas. Your approach to the "drive for life" culture is interesting. I have previously raised the pass plus initiative with you. Have you considered developing that initiative and rolling it out across Scotland? Most young people learn to drive in towns and cities, so they do not understand how to handle a car on a rural road and they learn the hard way. That seems to be a matter on which we could make some headway. Did you consider the effect of the pass plus initiative?

As the member will know, there was a pass plus trial in Moray—

And in Aberdeenshire.

And in Aberdeenshire. It was generally positive, but we have to put it in the context that the people who went through the trial were self-selecting, so they came to the pass plus scheme with an interest in developing their skills. We must therefore be cautious about reading too much into it. Nonetheless, pass plus is one scheme. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents also has training schemes, as does the Institute of Advanced Motorists—for completeness, convener, I draw attention to my register of interests, which states that I am a member of that organisation. People can develop their skills in a number of ways—a number of driving schools also offer post-test training.

One issue is to direct people who are demonstrably failing to meet the required standards, particularly in the early years of their driving, to the remedial training that they clearly require. We will certainly consider the pass plus scheme as part of our broader intervention. The Driving Standards Agency is upgrading the pass plus scheme and is considering whether it may lead to a qualification. There is a broad understanding of the role of post-test training in improving the skills and behaviours of people on the roads.

You mentioned self-selection. An issue to reflect on is that we must learn how to incentivise such schemes so that they become an option that people want to take up.

I have a couple of other points. You referred to the role of infrastructure. The framework refers to two-plus-one-lane roads in more rural areas and states that you will continue to roll those out to provide overtaking opportunities. Will you consider the Scandinavian experience, which shows that you must have proper physical separation to reduce accidents on those stretches of road? A number of two-plus-one overtaking opportunities can cause the driver confusion, because there are changes in the direction of the overtaking lane.

Yes, we will of course consider that. The figures for the two-plus-ones are somewhat ambiguous. For example, some of the safest sections of the A9 are not the dual carriageway bits, but the two-plus-ones. However, the figures are not sufficiently decisive to lead us one way or the other. We must also be careful about using only accidents as a measure. At junctions, the Swedes are currently replacing traffic lights with roundabouts. The number of accidents has risen dramatically, but the number of injuries has fallen dramatically, because the accidents are now low-speed accidents. However, we must qualify that by saying that it is early days and that, as drivers get used to the new road infrastructure, speeds will perhaps rise and the impact will rise. Subtle analysis of what goes on is required to provide some understanding of and engagement with the psychology of road users, so that we understand why they do things.

Infrastructure has a role and the Swedes can demonstrate that two-plus-one with a separation has some advantage. We will continue to look at the matter.

You refer specifically to improving the information that has to be captured for casualty analysis. I suggest that we could capture two other useful pieces of information. One is the reason for the journey and the other is the distance that had been travelled prior to the accident. I do not know how easy it would be to gather that information, but it would help to inform our decisions.

The member makes good points and we have noted them.

I have a further question on the "Driving for life" section of the framework document. The Government states regularly that it has a commitment to sustainable and active travel, modal shift and public transport, so is not the assumption that is built into the description of children as pre-drivers unfortunate or unhelpful?

May I say, convener, you have used that phrase, but I never have.

It is used in the framework.

I mean that, personally, I have never used the phrase.

It is in your document.

If it has escaped into the wild via the document, we will perhaps lasso it and return it to the zoo.

There is an entire section headed "Pre-Drivers".

I make the serious point that we must engage with people whom we reasonably expect to become drivers and ensure that, when they become drivers, they understand the nature of the transition to being a driver and that they have acquired a set of habits—I hope through the education system—that makes them much better drivers than they would be if we did not intervene.

I hope that, when that language is being expunged next time round, the assumption might be the safer one that all young people will be road users, but that, certainly in parts of the country such as Glasgow, maybe only about half of them will be drivers. Perhaps that assumption should be reinforced next time round.

The convener makes a good point. London has the lowest proportion of cars per household, at something of the order of 37 per 100. The proportion in Glasgow is also low, with a figure that is below 50 per 100. However, when Alison McInnes and I return to Aberdeenshire, we are in territory where the figure is 102 or thereabouts. That reflects the different needs and opportunities to access public transport.

I simply make the point that all of us are road users, whether or not we end up being drivers.

The framework contains a commitment to promote the voluntary use of intelligent speed adaptation, which in effect is technology to govern the speed at which a vehicle can travel along different sections of its route to tie in with speed limits. You are considering carrying out a pilot to test the effectiveness of such a system. Why would a voluntary scheme have the most benefit, given that, in all likelihood, it would not be embraced by the speed merchants and is more likely to be self-selecting, to use your phrase of a few minutes ago?

A voluntary scheme is a good place to start. The scheme is not about the technology intervening and putting on the brakes; it is about telling people that they are exceeding the speed limit.

Sorry, minister, but the first one is an option.

It is an option, but our primary focus is on a system that tells people when they exceed the limit. Drivers who are caught speeding often say that they did not know that they were breaking the speed limit. For example, they were in a 30mph zone, but thought that they were in a 40mph zone, or they were in a 40mph zone, but thought that they were in a 50mph zone. Of course, we must take that with a pinch of salt. People in those circumstances will say such things, but the system that we are considering removes that excuse. We want to explore the role that it can play. About 15 years ago, I had a car in which I could press a button for three different speeds and it went "bong" if I exceeded the top speed. What happened was that, when it went "bong", I took my foot off the throttle and did not drive faster. Quite a lot of the time, speeding is inadvertent, but even if it is deliberate, it can perhaps be tackled through conditioning behaviour. We want to explore whether such a system can make a contribution, but it might not.

Is the framework accompanied by an increase in the Scottish Government's road safety budget?

The framework is not a budgetary document. That matter will follow later.

I will ask you about cycling. You have been under a wee bit of pressure recently from the cycling lobby about what it considers to be reductions in the budget for cycling. Pages 46 to 49 of the framework deal with cycling. The focus there is on improving behaviour through schools, for instance; there is nothing about separating cyclists from other road users or the kind of infrastructure development that the cycling lobby wants. How will the framework feed through to decisions on funding?

We have provided significant sums of money. Sustrans is getting a little more than £3.5 million for the national cycling network and school run projects in the current year; we are giving £2.5 million to trunk road cycling projects and more than £9 million to local authorities for cycling, walking and safer streets; and there is also £1.4 million for "Smarter Choices, Smarter Places" pilots, so quite a lot is going on. The way in which money to support cycling is delivered has changed, but I take issue with the suggestion that we are not making interventions that will make a real difference, because I believe that we are.

The framework states that each road death costs £1.65 million. Therefore, the extrapolated cost of the 288 Scottish road deaths in 2007 would be £475 million. The road safety budget is £3 million and you just said that the cycling budget is about £9 million. Are those figures proportionate?

I do not want to get bogged down in numbers when we are trying to talk about principles and people's lives. The £1.65 million is not, of course, a cash cost. It concerns the loss of earning capacity of the person and the support that may have to be given to people who are left behind. It is the old apples and oranges argument: if we have six apples and four oranges, we have 10 pieces of fruit but describing it as 10 pieces of fruit does not tell us how many apples and oranges we have; they are different things.

We are trying to identify genuine benefits from changing the way in which we conduct public policy through creating the framework that we have just published and through the group that we will establish. If we can do that, it will guide and direct what we have to do to ensure that our roads are safer. There is an increasing need for road users—adult road users in particular—to exercise personal responsibility. Engagement in that is the fundamental measure that will change the numbers of people who are killed and seriously injured on our roads.

I am examining the Government's panoply of policies from the highest level down to specific measures. Expenditure on walking and cycling ticks a number of boxes. Road safety appears to be a high priority in the strategic transport projects review that was published relatively recently and, according to the framework, £1.3 billion will be spent on major infrastructure projects and network management over the next three years. How much of that is going on safety or—I can never remember the exact phrase—ambulant and non-emissions producing forms of transport? Should we not focus proportionally more of that significant resource on those policy areas rather than on the big infrastructure, or should the big infrastructure projects more explicitly contain safety elements or elements that promote walking or cycling than at present?

I am sure that you accept that we do not seek to build unsafe roads. Major projects to build new roads or make upgrades often involve embedded expenditure for cycling and walking that is not disconnected from the projects. For example, the provision of an underpass in the design of the Fochabers and Mosstodloch bypass has been slightly controversial, but it is an important part of creating the cycling infrastructure that will be associated with that road improvement and improving safety for cyclists and pedestrians. The question that you properly implicitly pose is whether we can do better in that regard. The answer will always be yes, because there will always be more to do, but it is a key part of planning our major transport projects and is not always fully reflected in the way that we count the money that we spend on walking or cycling.

The category that I was struggling to find was active travel. Can we feature active travel more prominently in the framework and budgetary decisions? I think that you are saying "Yes, we can," but I hope that that will be taken up in the implementation of the framework and future budgets.

I am a fan of active travel myself and have so far done about 400 miles in ministerial journeys on foot. I will shortly journey to St Andrew's house and I will do that on foot as well. I will ensure that we certainly can.

Perhaps "Yes, we can" will one day turn into "Yes, we are."

I thank the minister and his officials for attending the committee. We will suspend briefly before the next agenda item to allow for the changeover of witnesses.

Meeting suspended.

On resuming—