Road safety for young drivers
A Westminster Hall debate on road safety for young drivers is scheduled for Tuesday 28 January 2025, from 9:30am to 11:00am. The debate will be led by Julia Buckley MP (Labour, Shrewsbury).

This is a short overview of the issues that may be discussed in the debate in Westminster Hall on 22 March 2016 between 2.30 and 4.00pm, GPS satellite navigation and heavy goods vehicles. The Member who secured the debate is Craig Mackinlay MP (Con., South Thanet).
Recent Parliamentary information on satellite navigation devices and HGVs can be found via this link.
Satnavs (technically referred to as ‘in vehicle information systems’ or IVIS) are currently subject to licensing provisions of the Road Traffic (Driver Licensing and Information Systems) Act 1989 and the Driver Information Systems (Exemption) Order 1990 (SI 1990/865).
In 2006 the Labour Government consulted on IVIS further to significant technological advances since the introduction of the original legislation. [1] The results of the consultation were published in May 2008. It committed to taking forward further work in some areas of IVIS such as:
More recently in December 2011 the Coalition Government announced measures to tackle the problem of satnavs inappropriately directing HGVs and other vehicles:
Most recently, the Transport Minister, Andrew Jones, told the House that:
There have consistently been calls for the Government to ‘decriminalise’ enforcement of HGV bans by making it a civil offence, enforceable by local authorities, rather than over-stretched police services. [4] The Transport Committee recently endorsed this approach more generally. [5]
As indicated above, the Government sees improvements in HGV-specific satnav devices as being key to tackling problems with these vehicles using inappropriate routes. However, it is not clear how many HGV drivers use a bespoke system (which can be expensive compared to their generic equivalents, e.g. here) and how many others rely on more generic satnav, or free-to-use options like Google maps on a smartphone.
It is possible to have the maps corrected, though it is not clear how long it takes for changes to come on stream. Almost all satnavs run off information provided by two mapping companies: Navteq/Here and Tele Atlas/TomTom. Both companies provide reporting systems on their websites, on which users can report problems.
There have been ongoing issues with wrongly-directed HGVs in Kent, exacerbated by the county’s Channel links and the large volume of foreign-registered traffic that travels through it.
In 2012 the then MP for South Thanet, Laura Sandys, talked of the problems caused by HGVs using the A257, which runs from Sandwich to Canterbury and passes through small communities such as Ash, Shatterling and Wingham. [6]
There is a particular problem in the town of Sandwich. In 2014 a local Lorry Watch programme found that there were more than 250 large vehicles entering the town every day. [7]
Kent County Council’s Freight Action Plan for 2012-16 stated that it was working to develop an online lorry journey planner; using ‘positive signing’ to direct lorries onto the most suitable roads; and had attended the Government’s ‘satnav summit’. In the future it would
A Westminster Hall debate on road safety for young drivers is scheduled for Tuesday 28 January 2025, from 9:30am to 11:00am. The debate will be led by Julia Buckley MP (Labour, Shrewsbury).
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