Gay brings toddlers up to speed
The former Late Late Show presenter visited the Le Cheile creche on Cork Street in Dublin City to launch the Road Safety Authority’s (RSA) new initiative for children, “Simon and Friends”.
Taking the view that you are never too young to learn the lessons of road safety, the RSA chairman along with RSA chief executive Noel Brett launched the new programme that is aimed at children aged five and under and that will be available to interested pre-schools free of charge in the coming months.
Gay admitted that the new programme, which was piloted in five County Childcare Committees last year, was simply an illustration of the series of initiatives aimed at all school-going children.
“We are working our way right up through the whole school curriculum and we are ending up at transition year where students now around Ireland can do the theory test before they leave school,” he said.
“Eventually, in years to come, people will be leaving school imbued with the philosophy of road safety.”
He admitted to still feeling frustration at what he called the slow rate of progress in implementing some road safety measures, particularly mobile speed cameras.
“If we had the authority to do things of our own, that is, the Road Safety Authority, there is a whole range of things that we would have done by now.
“Unfortunately we can only act really in an advisory capacity,” he said, adding that civil servants “do not understand the meaning of the word ‘urgent’.”
Speed cameras will be operational by July, a situation he welcomed, although he said they were “five years too late”.
“I think they will bring about a huge change. They will cause a great deal of anger, resentment and annoyance to begin with, but slowly but surely their purpose will sink in.”
The RSA is considering a number of submissions on other ways to improve road safety and some of those are likely to be recommended to the Government this year.
* www.rsa.ie
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