Warning that may have prevented 200 deaths

THE Government was warned six years ago that its failure to tackle the annual toll of more than 400 fatalities on Irish roads was in danger of becoming a national scandal.

The former chairman of the National Safety Council (NSC), Eddie Shaw, informed senior politicians in 2000 that 200 deaths from traffic collisions could be prevented each year if it fully implemented its Road Safety Strategy.

It is understood that the NSC wrote to each member of the Government as well as Junior Environment Minister Bobby Molloy and Niall Callan, the chair of the Government’s High Level Group on Road Safety, in August 2000.

Mr Shaw personally wrote to each member of the Cabinet in order to explain his organisation’s key messages.

“Properly resourced and targeted, this strategy could prevent 200 deaths per annum and thousands of serious injuries,” he wrote.

“If this is not done the question we will all reflect on in one, three or five years’ time will be, was this the biggest scandal of all?”

Mr Shaw resigned last November in frustration at the Government’s failure to implement its own strategy.

The road safety campaigner accused politicians of being “criminally negligent” for not bringing in measures to reduce the number of people killed on Irish roads.

In his 2000 letter, seen by the Irish Examiner, Mr Shaw praised the Government for introducing a road safety strategy in 1998, which he said was working.

However, he pointed out that there was a need for more rapid progress in legislation and technology to support enforcement.

He said a cost-benefit analysis by economist Peter Bacon ranked road safety at the top of any list of initiatives to be given expenditure from relatively scarce Government funding.

“Why is Government not giving its own Road Safety Strategy this priority?” Mr Shaw asked ministers.

He also identified the lack of an individual responsible for ensuring speedy decisions from different decision-makers as a cause of concern.

“In the current environment of budgetary surplus, there is no justification whatsoever for the delay in fully-funding and resourcing this life-saving programme.”

Despite the introduction of several measures, such as penalty points, to improve road safety in recent years, the death toll on Irish roads last year was 399 - just 16 fatalities less than in 2000.