Deaths on the roads - Drive as you like others to drive

AT MIDDAY yesterday — statistically the most dangerous day of the year on our roads — An Garda Síochána website recorded that 329 people have been killed on our roads this year.

It is likely but no less sad that that figure will move closer to the 2006 toll, which reached 365, before the holiday period comes to an end in early January.

More empty chairs around Christmas dinner tables, more silences and more tears.

Despite ever-more graphic and increasingly effective publicity campaigns, despite highly visible Garda traffic corps activity, despite speed cameras, despite a profound cultural shift on drink driving, despite early-morning road blocks checking people on their way to work, too many people continue to die on our roads. Every day another tragedy, every evening another family broken.

Whatever the reason — speed, drink, drugs, bad roads, tiredness or just plain rudeness and bad driving, bad cars or motorbikes, or maybe, just plain bad luck — the figure, though a significant improvement on the 411 killed in 2001, is still far too high.

Though government has little more than a supervisory role in how we behave behind the wheel of our car it must accept some responsibility.

The embarrassing fiasco surrounding the attempted reform of provisional driving licence entitlements had fine, decent road safety objectives but backfired badly.

Ambitions are not always enough and Noel Dempsey’s “Keystone Cops” implementation is a frontrunner for one of the year’s Oscars for policy management bloopers — when you factor in the speed of the resultant abject, cringe-making and inevitable U-turn, it is hard to see it being beaten for the hard-fought gong.

However, it would be foolish to bet against a late run from the consistent and dogged defender of whatever he’s told to defend, Defence Minster Willie O’Dea.

Undoubtedly Mr Dempsey’s ambitions were of the highest order but did nobody in his department do what is done in every business in the world — from General Motors to the tiny seasonal, seaside chipper — sit down and work out what the practical implications of their proposal were? Obviously not and another credibility-draining farce ensued.

Figures released this week show that if you’re a motorcyclist you are 24 times more likely to die on our roads than a car user. A European Transport Safety Council report shows that at least 6,200 motorcyclists died in crashes across the EU last year. That is 16% of the total road deaths for the year, while motorcyclists represent a mere 2% of the total kilometres driven. So far this year, 31 motorcyclists and two pillion passengers have died on our roads, representing 10% of the total road deaths.

Endless and harrowing statistics, provocative public campaigns and enhanced policing all have a role to play. However, if we all try to see ourselves as other road users see us and modify our habits accordingly we will make a valuable contribution to reducing road deaths.

Drive as you would like other road users to drive.