Everyone’s to blame for road carnage

APART from the Irish Republic, no other developed country allows 25% of its citizens to drive around unaccompanied for years, with just a provisional licence and no requirement to take as much as one driving lesson.

While in Cornwall recently I heard a few 17-year-old boys talking about having had to take between 18 and 20 driving lessons before their test.

I drive at a snail’s pace in the Republic so that I can brake to avoid the many dangerous drivers.

Government and people are all at fault for the carnage. Kill two people while drink driving in the Republic and you get a €2,000 fine. No-one protests.

The Government allows this shameful situation to continue, with lenient treatment for killers and maimers while allowing untrained people on the roads.

In the second richest nation on earth, relatively little is spent on road safety enforcement or on improving roads.

Europeans are shocked that Americans think they have a right to bear arms and kill their fellow citizens. Irish people have just such a shameful attitude to road safety.

Here people think they have an absolute right to get in a car, untrained, uninsured, untested, and many of them seem not in the least worried if the consequences may well be fatal for others.

What’s even more shameful is that no one campaigns for the Government to take firm and decisive action. After all, how many even protest to their TDs?

Catherine McVerry

Cloghogue Heights

Newry

Co Down