Blame the makers of mobile death traps

YOUR editorial on road carnage (February 5), and the Taoiseach’s comments on the same subject, both blamed speed for the death of nine people on our roads the previous weekend.

Is it not high time the media, the Government and the RSA stopped highlighting speed as the main killer and pointed their collective finger at the root cause, which is motor vehicle design and designers.

The overwhelming evidence to prove this appears daily on our TV screens and in our newspapers.

There are constant images of mangled vehicles that folded like tin cans on impact, having offered no protection to their occupants.

Where is the revolutionary technology we hear so much about from the manufacturers of these mobile tin cans that are supposedly fitted with the latest safety features?

Where are these safety features when vehicles are hit from behind, the side or the front by other vehicles?

Why do we have to pay excessive prices for vehicles that are basically metallic mobile death traps?

And how can any motor vendor claim that a vehicle built to travel at speeds three times faster than the legal speed limit is safe?

Huge financial empires have been built on the back of motor vehicle design and sales. Thousands of innocent people have been killed to fuel these empires.

Motor manufacturers have proven they can design extremely safe vehicles. Unfortunately, they apply these standards only to their own toys, ie, Formula 1 cars which crash at huge speeds, but amazingly the drivers usually walk away unscathed.

It is time the onus for road safety was placed firmly where it belongs with motor designers and manufacturers.

They are the people who have created the motorised murder machines, so let them control their creations and save the lives of the innocents who drive them and travel in them.

Tom Fitzgerald

Four Roads

Askeaton

Co Limerick