Road safety - France has shown the way forward

THE French have cut road deaths by more than a third in just four years. The drop is proportionately the greatest in the European Union.

The credit for the improvement is being attributed largely to the leadership of politicians who determined to make road safety a priority by enforcing a new driving culture.

They sought to bring about changes in a range of areas — slower driving speeds, higher levels of seat belt use, and a stricter enforcement of the law by traffic police.

The change has been really dramatic, when one considers that France used to be responsible for 16% of Europe’s road deaths just four years ago.

Three-quarters of the decline has been attributed to better management of road speeds, largely as a result of the use of a new automated camera system. In 2003 the French intensified road checks and tightened up on sanctions for all forms of traffic offences.

In effect, it was a kind of zero tolerance on the roads. To help enforce this, they introduced about 1,500 fixed and mobile speed cameras.

There was a dramatic decline in road deaths in this country when the penalty points system was first introduced in 2002. Road deaths, which had been at 415 in 1999, were down to 335 in 2003 — but the old complacency set in again and the road deaths went up to 399 by the end of 2005.

The essence of zero tolerance is that no violations are acceptable and even minor offences will be pursued with rigor and resolve.

Figures published last year indicated that 25,000 people were charged with driving without a driver’s licence, but only 3,000 were actually convicted.

In 2002, a law was introduced to compel all drivers to carry their licence. However, the size and make up of the Irish driving licence is not conducive to being carried in a pocket at all times, so it was promised at the time that a smaller, credit-card-size licence would be introduced by mid-2003. It is now four years later, and we must ask what is so difficult about making such a change?

Random breath testing has been a great success since its introduction in July of last year. Figures suggest there are about 80 people alive today who would be dead but for the intervention, and many thousands have been spared the trauma of serious injury.

Other than driver error, the two main causes of accidents have been drink and speed. Random breath testing has already brought about a significant change in relation to drink driving, but each week hundreds of people are still being arrested for driving over the limit. There is, therefore, no room for complacency, because too many drivers have not yet got the message.

The French have demonstrated that speed cameras can be effective in tackling the speed problem. But to be effective in Ireland, we need an efficient and effective camera system.

Last year, it was disclosed that almost half of the photographs taken by speed cameras were unusable. The cameras worked some of the time — so they were not as useless as the voting machines — but we should learn from the French by insisting on the implementation of a proper camera system for everyone’s safety.