Roads minister abandoned young driver safety plans after taking power
Roads minister abandoned young driver safety plans after taking power
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Exclusive: Growing calls for licence restrictions fall on death ears in the Department for Transport – despite Lilian Greenwood’s former support. A minister responsible for road safety has abandoned her support for a law targeting dangerous young drivers after joining government, The Independent has learned.
![[Floral tributes were left on Bramley Lane near Wakefield, West Yorkshire after Friday’s fatal crash]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/27/11/SEI237299435.jpg)
Lilian Greenwood backed a private member’s bill tabled last May calling for Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL), which places restrictions on newly-qualified drivers and has been adopted in many countries. But after Sir Keir Starmer appointed her minister for the future of roads following the general election, Ms Greenwood said she was not considering in the scheme – without explaining why she had dropped a policy she recognised as potentially life-saving a few months earlier.
![[Lilian Greenwood is minister for the future of roads]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/09/11/0171ec652da641fec2a571634999e40cY29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzM2NTA0NTIz-2.71322487.jpg)
Campaigners expressed frustration over the shelving of measures they hoped would resemble schemes in the US, Australia and New Zealand by imposing night time curfews on new drivers and restricting the numbers of young passengers they can carry. Supporters of GDL in Britain point to the 4,959 people who were killed or seriously injured in collisions involving young drivers in 2023 (the latest year for which data is available) – around a fifth of the national total. Young drivers (aged 17 to 24) are disproportionately involved in serious collisions at night and when carrying passengers and two thirds of those involved are men.
The statistics were compounded by a tragic collision near Wakefield on Friday night in which an 18-year-old driver and two of his teenage passengers were killed. Two other men in the car were rushed to hospital, one of whom remained in hospital with life-threatening injuries on Monday.
