Cullen and Gaybo have lost it as road safety strategy collapses
But it is puerile for them to intimate there is therefore nothing they can do because 90% of the accidents are attributed to driver behaviour.
“If the individual behind the wheel of the car obeys the rules of the road, doesn’t overtake on the white lines or bends, doesn’t drink or take drugs, doesn’t break the speed limit,” Martin Cullen told an RTÉ interviewer, “you and I won’t be having these conversations.”
Gay Byrne’s contribution to the debate during the week was even more astounding. “I don’t know what else we can do,” he said. “We have done all the horror ads, but there are obviously a great number of people who don’t look at television, listen to radio, or read newspapers, and don’t get the message.”
What would Gay have said on one of his own programmes if anybody else in authority had said such a thing? Like a great many other people, I welcomed his appointment because he seemed to have the most vital quality in abundance — commonsense.
Has he already become so paralysed by the fear of failure that he cannot even think? If he has no idea of what should be done, he should get out because he is obviously out of his depth.
The minister suggests that the points system is the remedy. It could well be, but not the way it is being implemented.
There was a dramatic drop in the number of road deaths following the introduction of the penalty points system in 2002. The level of road deaths dropped to 335 in 2003.
Eddie Shaw, the former chairman of the National Safety Council, quit last year because of a failure to implement the penalty points system properly. The politicians were using road safety as a political football. If there was sufficient will on the part of the authorities he believed the number of accidents could be lowered dramatically. Around 150 lives could be saved annually, and many more people would be spared the ordeal of serious injury.
This would amount to a tremendous saving for the economy, and that would more than compensate for whatever extra resources the gardaí might need.
In addition to the savings on health costs, there would also be savings on insurance costs. It is estimated that 100,000 drivers are uninsured, with the result that those who do have insurance have to pay an extra 10% to cover for the irresponsible cheats.
All these costs have a knock-on impact on businesses and ultimately our national competitiveness.
The Government came up with a three- year national road safety strategy, but it is already in tatters. It was designed to cut annual road deaths by 25% to below 300, but in the first two years road deaths increased by 19% to 399, and there are already 20 more road deaths than at the same time last year. At that rate, the deaths are on target to have increased, instead of decreased, by 25% by the end of this year.
Politicians and civil servants have only succeeded in squandering money and deluding themselves with their expensive publicity campaigns. The Government’s current approach to road safety has been a shambles, with one fiasco after another, such as delays in doing something about the 418,000 drivers who have never passed a driving test or the delay in introducing the points for 31 other offences such as holding a mobile telephone while driving.
Noel O’Flynn, chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Transportation, recently highlighted the fact that a quarter of all people killed here in road accidents are non-nationals, as are 18% of those caught for the penalty points — so those points cannot be enforced.
The Public Accounts Committee disclosed that 49% of the 108,000 photographs taken by garda speed cameras last year were useless largely because the equipment being used is inferior. Of the other 51%, the committee found that due to “administrative problems”, only one in seven of the drivers were ever fined or given penalty points, if they refused to cough up and contested the case in court. Thus, those who were photographed speeding have only a one-in-14 chance of ever getting the points.
Thousands of people are now betting on the chance they will get away with speeding. The problem should have been foreseen, but foresight is certainly not one of the qualities that the majority of people would attribute to this Government, or especially to Martin Cullen, who was responsible for the appalling voting machine fiasco. It is much too simplistic that drivers are responsible for the deaths on our roads. The great majority of those injured or killed are innocent people — pedestrians, passengers and the unfortunate occupants of other cars with responsible drivers who just happened to arrive at the wrong place at the wrong time.
WE need to implement a coherent road safety programme, tackling the dangers of speed and drink, with no tolerance whatever for such behaviour. Reckless drivers should be compelled to drive responsibly or they should be put off the road.
More visible enforcement should be designed not just to take cowboy drivers off the road but, more importantly, to persuade everybody to drive more responsibly.
The new system is supposed to speed up the process by encouraging first-time drink driving offenders to accept a fine and a ban without going into court to contest their on-the-spot conviction. This would save them court time and the unwelcome publicity, as well as help ease our court backlog.
A great many people might accept such a penalty, but it is already being undermined by the perception that offenders have a better than even chance of getting off if they contest the charges in court. People have also being avoiding conviction after failing breathalyser tests.
Last year 12,800 motorists were arrested for drink driving offences, but a massive 30% were never convicted. Some 1,600 of the cases were dismissed and 1,550 had their charges struck out. A further 742 escaped because no summons was served on them.
Gardaí complain that they have trouble getting doctors to come to garda stations at night to take blood samples from those suspected of impaired driving. Could legislation not be introduced to provide for trained gardaí to take blood?
A new kind of industry has been allowed to develop within the legal profession to help people beat convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol. Many get off due to some technicality or other rather than because they were not driving while impaired.
The whole thing has been allowed to develop into a lucrative game for the legal profession as well as a kind of road roulette in which law-abiding drivers and passengers are compelled to put their own lives at risk on our roads.
This has been undermining our legal system by effectively encouraging dangerous anti-social behaviour that has cost many lives. Those include the irresponsible people who drove after drinking too much alcohol, as well as innocent people. They just had the misfortune of arriving at the wrong place as the same time as a reckless driver. This introduces an element of unacceptable risk in all our lives.
