Driving on wrong side of roads on increase

A senior garda says that a growing number of elderly people are driving the wrong way on motorways — sometimes with fatal consequences — and they need to be educated on how to deal with fast, modern highways.

Chief Superintendent Gerard Dillane made his comments just a few days after a man in his 80s drove for several kilometres on the wrong carriageway of the M8 between North Cork and South Tipperary before being stopped.

Chief Supt Dillane, who previously served five years as the head of the traffic corps in the Garda Southern Region, said it was very fortunate there were no fatalities as a result.

However, in the past three years, there have been six deaths on motorways in Cork and Tipperary directly due to people driving on the wrong side, and some of these accidents were caused by elderly people who had become confused about their surroundings.

Last November, the NRA said it was going to put additional road markings on junctions near Mitchelstown and Cahir.

This followed an accident a few months earlier after an elderly woman took the wrong sliproad onto the M8 and crashed her Toyota Landcruiser into an oncoming car, killing a man in his 20s.

In July 2013, a man in his early 80s died after he drove the wrong way down the Cork-Midleton motorway.

Gardaí believe he took a wrong turn onto the motorway at a junction in Carrigtwohill on his way back from a trip to Midleton.

Gardaí have said that similar fatalities have occurred on motorways in other parts of the country.

They have recently started discussions with the Road Safety Authority (RSA) and National Roads Authority (NRA) to address the issue.

In particular, they have asked if improvements can be made to motorway junctions to ensure drivers do not make potentially fatal mistakes in accessing the wrong side of the carriageway.

Some countries are looking at installing flashing lights at junctions to ensure people are warned if they take a wrong turn, but these can be expensive to install.

Chief Supt Dillane told a meeting of the County Cork Joint Policing Committee yesterday that he would also suggest to the RSA that elderly drivers get “an education package” in dealing with motorway driving.

He said that when many older people first got behind the wheel, they rarely encountered roundabouts, traffic lights, dual carriageways, and certainly not motorways.

He suggested people aged over 70 should be taught how to deal with modern signs associated with motorways and how to drive on them.