THE Road Safety Bill will shortly be entering the House of Commons.

As a member of CTC, the national cyclists' organisation, I am concerned about the Government's proposal to lower the penalty for 'marginally' exceeding the speed limit from three points to two points.

The Government has suggested that 'marginal' could mean driving at 39mph in a 30mph area.

Small differences in speed can make a huge difference to the severity of the injuries suffered by injured pedestrians or cyclists. I would urge everyone to oppose this proposal.

On the positive side, the Safer Streets Coalition (of which CTC is a member) has drawn up a number of proposals that will make our roads safer for all road users.

l Introduce a default 20mph speed limit for most urban and residential streets. A pedestrian struck by a car travelling at 20mph has a 95 per cent chance of survival, but this drops to 50 per cent at 30mph. Properly enforced 20mph speed limits have been shown to reduce casualties by 70 per cent among child pedestrians and 60 per cent among other vulnerable road users. Casualty figures could be slashed if the vast majority of built-up roads had 20mph limits, as two-thirds of casualties occur on these roads.

Change the law on drivers' insurance schemes, to make it easier for non-motorised users to claim injury damages from drivers who hit them. If a driver hits a pedestrian, cyclist, equestrian or disabled person, the non-motorised user is far more likely to be injured. Therefore, drivers ought to have a greater duty of care for non-motorised users' safety, but this is not currently recognised in law. The law on driver insurance schemes should therefore be amended so that non-motorised users can claim injury damages from drivers who hit them - unless it can be proved that the non-motorised user behaved recklessly.

Lower "default" speed limits: 30mph for villages, with a 40mph or 50mph limit on non-built-up single carriageways.

Speed camera detectors: the proposed ban should cover all such devices, including those GPS devices which can only detect but not interfere with speed cameras.

"Black box" event data recorders: in the event of a collision, they would provide clear evidence about the driver's speed. Black boxes currently used by some police forces are only able to store 40 seconds of data at a time, and this data is only accessible if the vehicle is involved in a collision.

Mobile phones: the Government's proposed increase in fines should be for hands-free as well as hand-held phones, as the evidence shows they are just as distracting when used while driving.

Drink-driving: a reduction in the blood-alcohol limit from 80mg to 50mg per 100ml of blood in line with the majority of EU countries.

Bad driving offences: we await the Government's proposals to iron out the discrepancies in sentencing powers which lead the courts regularly to issue derisory sentences for drivers who kill and maim.

JASON BOYD

Ramsbottom