Overhaul of road safety laws ‘much overdue', experts say
Ministers are considering cutting the drink-drive limit in England and Wales and introducing mandatory eye tests for older drivers, according to The Times.
The proposals, set to be published as part of a road safety strategy in the autumn, also include tougher penalties for uninsured driving and failing to wear a seatbelt.
On Britain's roads last year, 1,633 people were killed and almost 28,000 seriously injured in traffic incidents, and numbers have remained relatively constant following a large fall between 2000 and 2010.
Edmund King, AA president, said: 'The time has come for a bold and proactive approach to road safety.
'This strategy is much overdue as road deaths have plateaued over the last decade.
'We believe these new measures will not only modernise our approach to saving lives but also provide renewed momentum in making our roads safer for everyone.'
Vision checks for older drivers and targeting drink and drug drivers are 'practical steps that can make a real difference', he said.
But failing to introduce limits on new drivers transporting peer-age passengers for six months is 'a major oversight', he added.
IAM RoadSmart director of policy and standards Nicholas Lyes said: 'Given progress on reducing fatal and serious collisions has stalled in recent years, we welcome the UK Government's ambition to publish an updated road safety strategy with the reported measures being a step in the right direction.
'While many drivers over the age of 70 are safe and competent, health issues and confidence can have an impact on driving abilities, so it is sensible to review whether changes need to be made.
'We would also support reducing the drink-drive limit in England and Wales alongside measures to target drug-driving, however these would require significantly more backing for roads policing teams to effectively enforce new laws.'
A Labour source said: 'At the end of the last Labour government, the number of people killed and seriously injured on our roads was at a record low, but numbers have remained stubbornly high under successive Conservative governments.
'In no other circumstance would we accept 1,600 people dying, with thousands more seriously injured, costing the NHS more than £2 billion per year.'
Meanwhile, the number of people killed in drink-driving incidents has risen over the past decade, reaching a 13-year high in 2022 and prompting concern that existing road safety measures are no longer working.
Under the plans being considered by Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander, the drink-drive limit in England and Wales could be cut from 35 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath to 22 micrograms.
This figure would be in line with Scotland – which cut its drink-drive limit in 2014 – and the rest of Europe, where no other country has a limit as high as that in England and Wales.
The UK is also one of only three European countries to rely on self-reporting of eyesight problems that affect driving, leading ministers to consider compulsory eye tests every three years for drivers aged over 70 and a driving ban for those who fail.
Other proposals are reported to include allowing the police to bring prosecutions for drug-driving on the basis of roadside saliva tests rather than blood tests as increasing numbers of drivers are being caught with drugs in their system.
The Labour source added: 'This Labour Government will deliver the first road safety strategy in a decade, imposing tougher penalties on those breaking the law, protecting road users and restoring order to our roads.'
The strategy is due to be published in the autumn, and all proposals will be subject to consultation.
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Why Mamdani's socialism-on-the-Hudson would be useful for America
Donald Trump and Zohran Mamdani are similar symptoms, and similarly reasons for guarded optimism. The president and the self-described 'democratic socialist' who is the Democratic nominee to be New York's next mayor, have risen on tides of resentments, and are inadvertent educators. Trump is teaching a daily seminar on the Founders' wisdom, especially the separation of powers, which Congress, by its self-marginalization, has weakened, thereby emancipating presidents from law and other restraints. Mamdani, if elected, will be similarly instructive regarding elementary economics and the limits of government's competence. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, selected by Vice President Kamala Harris as a running mate perhaps because he made her seem comparatively substantial, has defined socialism as 'neighborliness.' Probably many of Mamdani's young supporters have a similarly sentimental understanding of it. But always and everywhere, socialism is, first and foremost, about government control of economic life. Originally, socialism favored government ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Then it advocated government control of the economy's 'commanding heights.' Nowadays, socialism advances its aims by dominating the formerly 'private sector.' Government imposes its preferences, picking winners and losers with regulations, subsidies, import restrictions and other coercions. Not since the 1930s New Deal, and perhaps not even then (statism is difficult to quantify), has there been a peacetime U.S. administration as — strictly speaking — socialist as today's. In June, the Trump administration essentially nationalized U.S. Steel. MAGA hysteria about 'Comrade Mamdani' threatening to permeate everything with government seems synthetic. Over four decades ago, sociologist Daniel Bell postulated capitalism's 'cultural contradictions': Capitalism's success undermines the virtues (thrift, industriousness, deferral of gratification) that are prerequisites for its continuing success. Socialism's cultural contradiction is that it is parasitic on capitalism, which must produce the wealth that socialism redistributes — until the engine of wealth creation, battered by socialism's redistributive agenda, sputters. Mamdani's agenda includes 'free' (paid for by others) stuff (e.g., transportation and child care), and government bringing its deftness to the running of grocery stores. And even more stringent rent control that will further discourage expanding the inadequate housing supply that is pushing rent higher. Mamdani will be powerless, because politics is powerless, to assuage a longing that motivates many of his supporters: a hunger for a radical redistribution of status. In 1960, in 'The Constitution of Liberty,' a canonical volume of modern political theory, Friedrich Hayek wrote: 'There are few greater dangers to political stability than the existence of an intellectual proletariat who find no outlet for their learning.' Sixty-five years later, Hayek's warning needs amending: The danger is the excessive production of expensively schooled but not remarkably learned persons who are members of a cohort that is of minimal intellectual distinction, and is too large to be elite. They are members of a 'reserve army' (Mamdani might recognize this phrase from Karl Marx's 'Das Kapital') of persons more or less equally prepared to add not much value to the economy. (Maybe that Ethnic Studies major was a mistake.) Members of this distinctively modern proletariat, who have chosen to live in one of the nation's most expensive cities, have resentments not unlike those that motivate angry MAGA partisans: They ache for status and other comforts to which they feel entitled. Mamdani as mayor might not be much worse than his principal rivals: Current Mayor Eric Adams has a mediocre record and an aroma of corruption; the recycled Andrew M. Cuomo resigned under various clouds during his fourth term as governor. As mayor, none of the three would probably be as admired as the current police commissioner, Jessica S. Tisch. None of the three would be apt to challenge the teachers union that controls the nation's largest public school system, which is producing mostly depressing results. Besides, if Mamdani would be marginally worse than those other two products of the city's political culture, that might be constructive. He might become America's François Mitterrand. As France's president, Mitterrand set back socialism for several generations. He was elected in 1981 promising a 'rupture with capitalism' and a 'break with the logic of profitability.' He implemented sweeping nationalizations, radically increased welfare benefits, imposed higher taxes on the investing classes, instituted a shorter workweek without reduced compensation, etc. In 1982, after the franc had been thrice devalued, he pivoted to 'socialist rigor,' a.k.a. austerity: 'You can't continue to crush with taxes and fees all those people who create wealth in France.' Socialism in a circumscribed but conspicuous jurisdiction can occasionally be a valuable reminder of toxic political temptations. Hence Mamdani's usefulness.
