Bridget Phillipson MP: Labour is protecting road users, making journeys safer and saving lives

Carol has shown immense courage and bravery throughout her tireless campaign to ensure other families don’t experience what she and her children have been through.

Together, we've pushed to ensure her story was heard and road safety law is strengthened. We’ve sent dozens of letters, attended numerous meetings and made representations to multiple departments.

Only once a change of government was secured have we seen concrete change, with Labour’s new Road Safety Strategy, the first in over a decade, setting out bold steps to make our roads safer for everyone.

Tackling drink and drug driving is an important issue for many in our community and Labour is delivering the bold reforms residents have been asking for. New consultations will look at lowering drink-drive limits and new powers to suspend licences for serious motoring offences, because every life matters.

Four people die on our roads every day. Every death or serious injury on our roads is one too many.

We are taking action to tackle the causes of road collisions, harness new technology, and ensure enforcement keeps pace with modern risks. We’ll do this to reduce deaths and serious injuries by 65% by 2035.

This is a strategy which recognises that while human error is inevitable, deaths and serious injuries are not.

It will mandate advanced safety tech in new vehicles, invest £24billion in our roads and £616million in walking and cycling.

It will consult on a minimum learning period for learner drivers, explore a higher theory test pass mark and introduce mandatory eyesight testing for drivers over 70.

It will create safer road infrastructure by updating speed limit guidance, designing safer, people-focused roads and supporting trials to improve rural road safety for motorcyclists.

It will harness modern tech by linking collision and healthcare data and establishing a Road Safety Investigation Branch so we can learn from collisions and improve prevention.

And it will deliver robust enforcement, by introducing penalty points for seat belt offences, tackling illegal number plates and uninsured driving and launching a new Roads Policing Innovation Programme.

This is a strategy for drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, and families across Sunderland.

I’m proud to have campaigned alongside Carol, and to be part of a Labour government that is delivering for people like her, who have lost loved ones to preventable fatalities on our roads.

A Labour government that is protecting road users, making journeys safer and saving lives.