Jenny Chapman receives Brake award
Jenny Chapman, member of parliament for Darlington, has been awarded the Brake and Direct Line Group Parliamentarian Award for July, for her campaigning efforts to save the lives of young drivers.
In Britain, 25 young drivers are killed or seriously injured on UK roads every week.
Jenny was inspired to campaign on the issue of young driver safety following a tragic crash in her Darlington constituency. Jenny has coordinated road safety groups, insurers and fellow parliamentarians, around this cause, with the goal of agreeing measures which can achieve cross-party support and make a positive change to the safety of the UK’s young drivers.
Jenny first raised the issue of young driver safety in a question to the Prime Minister on 7 February, proposing that the government look at the merits of introducing a system of Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) in the UK.
Since then, Jenny has met with road safety groups, including Brake, to gain insight on the issue of young driver safety. This work bore fruit with the first meeting of the Young Driver Safety Group taking place in parliament on 26 June.
Young drivers are disproportionately at risk on our roads and Brake has long advocated introducing a system of GDL to address this through its ‘L for Later’ campaign. GDL is a system which includes a minimum supervised learning period and restrictions for newly qualified drivers and is proven to work; a government report stated the public health benefits of GDL are indisputable and could prevent up to 9,000 casualties annually.
Commenting, Jenny Chapman said, ‘I look forward to championing young driver safety in Parliament, with the support of Brake and the many great organisations who have worked tirelessly on this issue for many years. I hope my fellow Parliamentarians are inspired to follow suit.’
