I move amendment No. 1:
In line 22, to delete "Traffic" and substitute "Safety".
The purpose of this amendment is to emphasise that this Bill, which is introducing a number of new provisions in relation to dangerous driving and driving while a person has drink taken, is concerned with safety. For that reason I am suggesting that instead of calling it the Road Traffic Act, 1968, as it will be, we call it the Road Safety Act, 1968. The words "Road Traffic" and "Road Traffic Act" are very nebulous terms and do not mean anything very much to the ordinary person. Where we are concerned with road safety, the enactment under which people are prosecuted should be the Road Safety Act, that where an offence is committed it is an offence against road safety, that all the emphasis and all the propaganda should be about road safety. As I have said, road traffic is a very nebulous, neutral term and does not get at what we are trying to achieve in this Bill, that is, greater safety on the roads. It is for that reason I have put down this amendment.
I can see the Minister saying, and I can anticipate him saying, that he has been advised that this could not be done because the Parliamentary draftsman would find it quite impossible to reconcile the Road Traffic Act, 1961, many of the provisions of which are amended in this Bill and the Road Safety Act, 1968, and he would not know what to call them in the collective citation at the end of the Bill. I want to call the attention of the House to the fact that as it so happens the Act which they have introduced in Great Britain dealing with many of the things such as the breathaliser test, the drunken driving test, is referred to as the Road Safety Act, 1967, and has reference to the Principal Act, the Road Traffic (Amendment) Act, 1960, the Road Traffic and Roads Improvement Act, 1960, the Road Traffic (Driving of Motor Cycles) Act, 1960, the 1962 Act, the Road Traffic Act, 1964 and that they will be cited together as the Road Traffic Acts, 1960 to 1967, so if the Parliamentary draftsman thinks there is some objection on the grounds of drafting to referring to this Bill as the Road Traffic Acts, 1961-1968, his fears and scruples should be allayed by what they have done in Britain.
Many of the offences which will be commonly prosecuted under this Bill when it becomes law will be offences against this particular Bill, without reference to the 1961 Act. Therefore, we should have envisaged people being guilty of offences under this as being guilty of offences under the Road Safety Act. The idea of road safety should be the dominant theme in all references to this particular Act. It is for that reason and all that this envisages and whatever propaganda value there is in this that we ought to substitute the word "Safety" for "Traffic" in the Title.