Road traffic laws ‘not realising potential’
Prof Denis Cusack, director of the Medical Bureau of Road Safety and head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at UCD, one of the authors of the report, believes Ireland faces an ongoing battle in road safety.
The researchers examined data from the past five years which show that almost 25,000 drivers had given blood or urine samples over the legal limit for driving.
In the same period almost 20,000 drivers gave a breath sample which showed their consumption was above the legal limit.
For blood and urine cases the average conviction rate for the 1999-2002 period was 63%.
But Prof Cusack, in association with Dr Cliona McGovern from the Department of Forensic Medicine, UCD, found in 2003 the conviction rate had plummeted to 34%.
“For evidential breath cases, the average conviction rate for 2000-2002 was 36% and for 2003 it was 27%. Some of the decrease in conviction figures for 2003 may be explained by the adjournment of a very large number of cases based on evidential breath testing results awaiting the outcome of a constitutional challenge to the Road Traffic Act, 1994, but these adjournments do not explain the dramatic decrease in convictions in cases of over the limit blood and urine alcohol results in 2003,” the authors state.
The authors also released the preliminary findings of a study of fatal single vehicle collisions in Co Kildare in the 1994-2004 period.
“Of 32 driver fatalities, where the driver was the sole occupant of the vehicle, 16 had a blood alcohol concentration of 160mg/100ml or greater,” the report states.
The authors concluded that it was imperative that current road safety programmes, including random breath testing, be fully implemented.
If that is not achieved, the authors say, Ireland will never see a reduction in deaths and serious injuries on the roads.
