Vehicles: Heavy Goods Vehicles

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

The noble Earl is quite right that that will be an important safety development. At the moment the sensor equipment we have that reliably detects other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists is still in development. Unfortunately, some of the systems treat a tree as if it were a cyclist, and of course, once you get wrong information, the driver begins to ignore it. Therefore we are pursuing these issues very rapidly, and the department will welcome any uptake of effective systems by vehicle owners. However, vehicle registration is at the EU level, and mandatory fitment will need to be agreed with the other member states.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister consider amending the construction and use regulations to remove the exemption for skip lorries and cement mixing lorries from the requirement to have a safety bar? These are the vehicles which are killing many bicycle riders now.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, there are constraints on some of these vehicles, but the noble Baroness is right to say that there are special vehicles which are exempt. We have been looking at reducing those exemptions, and I will be glad to keep her up to date with where that process is going.