Road safety campaigner Ross Le Brun has urged the Home Affairs Committee, which is responsible for policing, to get tough on misogyny on the roads as part of its new push to deal with violence against women and girls.
But his appeal was rebuffed by Home Affairs president Marc Leadbeater, who claimed that road rage affected women and men, and rejected a sex-based approach to policing the problem.
Deputy Le Brun insisted it was an issue of particular concern to a growing number of women.
‘I am increasingly hearing from local women about aggressive and intimidating behaviour from drivers,’ he said.
‘This included a recent email to me about a case where a van driver allegedly used his vehicle to intimidate a woman before driving alongside and verbally abusing her, but when it was reported she was told by police that no action would be taken.
‘My concern is that these incidents are being treated purely as traffic matters without considering the intimidation and fear caused to the person being targeted.’
He asked Home Affairs to look at whether some cases of road rage against women could be dealt with under public order legislation which concerns the fear or provocation of violence.
Deputy Leadbeater, who was answering questions following his committee’s latest update statement to the States, relayed a recent anecdote about an experience he had on the roads while cycling in St Martin’s.
‘I was going along on my bike and a van came past at about 40mph, nearly knocked me off my bike, and I was worried sick,’ he said.
‘The driver was in the traffic at the bottom of the road and I got alongside him and said to him that he had nearly knocked me off my bike.
‘He started screaming at me and said he would knock my sunglasses off if I carried on.
‘It’s not a gender-based thing – road rage is road rage. If I had been a woman or a man approaching that guy, he was going to react in the same way.’
Deputy Le Brun was also knocked back by Environment & Infrastructure president Adrian Gabriel when he pressed again for stronger laws on driving on pavements.
Replies to a previous set of his questions had made it clear that the law did not set a lower speed limit on drivers mounting pavements, and Deputy Le Brun wants a limit of 5mph introduced.
‘It is not just about enforcement but about creating an expectation and culture of everybody realising that there is an objective speed which they can see on their speedometer and know they are supposed to be keeping to while driving on a pavement,’ he said.
‘There is evidence that it is a problem.
‘There are people hiding in gateways. I have shown you videos of children hiding in gateways as buses are driving past at 20mph on the pavement.’
Deputy Gabriel said that road safety was ‘an important feature’ of his committee’s work but he did not see the need for the legislation Deputy Le Brun wanted.
‘It is around proportionality, and pavement surfing or driving on or mounting the pavement is a necessity in Guernsey because of our road network, unless we turn Guernsey into a one-way system with contraflows, and that is not necessarily going to happen,’ said Deputy Gabriel.
‘Putting in legislation which is then enforceable is not necessarily practical.
‘It is incumbent on drivers to drive responsibly and if they need to mount the pavement to do that in a responsible manner.’