Annual road death toll grows by 43

THE National Safety Council is disappointed its grim prediction that more people would be killed on the roads in 2004 than in 2003 has come true.

In 2004, 379 people were killed in road traffic accidents, compared with 336 in 2003 - an increase of 43 deaths despite the introduction of a wide ranging penalty points system.

And just days into the New Year three more people have been killed, one in Kildare and two in Leitrim.

A 26-year-old man was killed in the early hours of Saturday morning when his car hit a tree on the Broadford to Edenderry road.

He was, Anthony Hopkins of Broadford, Kildare, and was travelling alone.

Two 17-year-old males from Leitrim died when the van in which they were travelling hit a tree in the early hours of New Year's Day on the Sligo to Enniskillen Road. They were Adrian McSherry of Glenfarne, Co Leitrim and Aidan Leonard, also of Glenfarne. The male driver of the van and a male passenger were taken to Sligo General Hospital. The driver's condition has been described as serious while the passenger was satisfactory.

Mr Brian Farrell said last year's increase was a reverse of the downward trend in road deaths achieved in both 2002 and 2003.

"It certainly is a setback because we had achieved so much in 2002 and 2003. We really need to return to the behaviour we witnessed during the first four months after the introduction of penalty points," he said.

In 1997 when the first Government road safety strategy was launched, there were around 40 road deaths every month. Last year, around 30 people were killed on the roads every month.

"We need to reduce our road deaths to around 20 a month and we did that during the first four months after penalty points were introduced in November 2002," said Mr Farrell.

Between November and December 2002 and January and February 2003, 85 people were killed on the roads - an achievement that matched international best practice.

The effectiveness of the penalty points system was hampered because it only applied to four offences and was manually operated. The fully computerised version will have 69 offences.

The penalty points system needed to be seen to be enforced if it was to be effective in cutting road deaths.