Road Safety - Cullen drags his feet amid the carnage

THIRTY people have been killed since Transport Minister Martin Cullen said there was urgent need for reform to improve road safety. A month has passed and nothing has happened about that urgent need.

Fine Gael spokesman Deputy Shane McEntee charged that Mr Cullen is procrastinating for no good reason, as we are entering the most dangerous time of year on the roads. There was a dramatic decline in road deaths with the introduction of the penalty points system. Road deaths, which had been 415 in 1999, were down to 335 in 2003, but little effort was made to implement the new system that had proved so successful. Only 3,000 of the 25,000 people charged with driving without a licence were convicted.

In 2002, a law was introduced to compel all drivers to carry their driver’s licence. At the time it was promised that a smaller credit-card- size licence would be introduced by mid-2003.

Almost half the photographs taken by speed cameras were useless, while 40% of the drivers stopped with excess alcohol, beat the system.

There are currently an estimated 100,000 uninsured drivers on our roads, as well as 380,000 drivers who never passed a driving test. By the end of 2005, road deaths were back up to 399. There has been another distinct improvement since the introduction of random breath testing, with the arrest of around 400 people a week for driving with excess alcohol.

The ultimate impact will probably depend on the level of convictions. Following the tragic weekend in which five young people lost their lives on the roads in Co Monaghan, Mr Cullen announced that the Road Safety Authority had made 21 proposals to improve road safety.

The proposals included an overhaul of the driving licence regime and a virtual total ban on alcohol for inexperienced drivers.

Many of the suggested reforms could be implemented promptly. The minister called for cross-party consensus in support of the measures, as they were so important. Fine Gael enthusiastically endorsed the call, but not one of the proposals has been implemented.

The minister has been dragging his feet and is now suggesting that “such a complete transition will take some time”. It is not as if the need for such reforms has not been recognised for years. A total of 338 people have already died on the roads this year.

It is not enough for Mr Cullen to avail of the latest disaster to garner publicity by making some pronouncements and then forget about the whole thing until there is another tragedy.