Road safety plan could save 100 lives a year

LAST year was one of the safest on Irish roads and more than 400 lives could be saved by the end of 2012 if the Road Safety Authority’s strategy is implemented in full, the body’s annual report claims.

In 2007, 338 people died in road collisions, a decrease of 27 or 7% on 2006 when a total of 365 people lost their lives.

This represents a 30% drop in road deaths compared to 1997 when 472 people lost their lives on Irish roads.

2007 was one of the safest years on Irish roads in over 40 years and only 1961 and 2003 were safer when a total of 335 road deaths were recorded in both years.

The RSA strategy aims to tackle speeding, drink and drug driving and failure to wear seat belts. Ireland will be among the best countries in the world at implementing road safety practices if the strategy is followed, says RSA chairman Gay Byrne in the authority’s annual report.

“Expressed as a monthly average, the number of fatalities in 2007 was 27.33 per month; in 2005, it was 33 and in 2006, the monthly average was 30.42,” the report states.

“The core objective of the Government Road Safety Strategy 2007-2012 is to reduce road deaths to no greater than 60 fatalities per million population by the end of 2012.

“This equates to an average of 21 road deaths per month or 252 deaths per annum,” the report adds.

According to provisional figures released by the EU, Ireland entered the top 10 best performing EU countries in terms of road safety in 2007.

Ireland is ranked in ninth place out of 25 EU countries and was the most improved European country in terms of the reduction in road deaths between 2006 and 2007.

“This was against a disappointing performance overall at EU level when for the first time in a number of years, there was no reduction in the number of road deaths across the EU.

“Despite Ireland performing well at an EU level in 2007, there is still a large gap between Ireland and best practice countries such as Sweden, Britain and the Netherlands,” the report states.

“Ireland recorded 7.9 road deaths per 100,000 of population in 2007 compared to 5.1 in Britain, 5.3 in Sweden and 4.3 in the Netherlands.”

The report shows that 290,677 applications for a driving test were received in 2007.

This is the greatest number of applications received in a single year.

In the period from October 22, 2007, to the end of the year, 109,752 of the total applications were received.

The average waiting time for a test at the end of 2007 was 19 weeks and 179,500 persons were awaiting one.

A total of 592,722 penalty point notices were issued to motorists last year. Of those, 450,610 were related to speeding offences; 45,816 were for no driver’s safety belt; 25,090 were for driving a vehicle while holding a mobile phone and 13,314 for failing to obey traffic lights.

Last year, a total of 686,705 vehicles were tested at NCT centres, of which 641,264 were passed.