We need a national road safety plan that isn’t running on empty

EMER Costello had an idea that she wanted to share.

The Labour Party member of the European Parliament wanted to reduce road deaths by introducing an “urgent review and refocus of the road safety strategy following a number of road fatalities over the Bank Holiday”. She claimed that “clearly the campaign to keep deaths off our roads is faltering after so many years of significant progress. It is time to review present policy and to determine why measures which have been previously successful are no longer effective.”

So she sent out a press release to that effect. She lamented that “the tragic death of a man in a stolen taxi crash in North Wall in Dublin yesterday evening brings to four the number of fatalities over the August bank holiday weekend. That is in stark contrast to zero fatalities on the same bank holiday weekend in 2012.” Subsequently another man involved in that theft and crash died from his injuries.

Costello’s press release launched into recollection of what she termed the “joyriding epidemic of the 1980s” that “caused huge numbers of deaths and injuries and struck terror on the streets of Dublin.” She added that “it is unconscionable that we could return to a similar situation of lawlessness on the streets. While advances in technology have meant that car security has been greatly improved, the hijacking of the taxi at knife point is a terrifying and very worrying development. Working at all hours, taxi drivers are extremely vulnerable. Every effort must be made to ensure their safety.”

Now who could argue against her? Who would not condemn the behaviour of the young men who stole the taxi, notwithstanding that two of them died as a result of their actions? Who wouldn’t want things to be safer for taxi drivers? Who doesn’t want to see the number of road deaths reduced further? Who wants to go back to the past? The problem, however, was the cynical opportunism of the MEP in attempting to grab headlines at a time when news traditionally is in short supply. Because anyone who examines what Costello had to say would have to regard it is as facile, pious and unhelpful.

To attempt to raise fears that the dreadful incident involving the taxi theft is an example of an extensive and out of control problem is cynical political posturing.

And to link it to the other road deaths is insulting to those bereaved in those other accidents. To use the example of five deaths over the bank holiday weekend as evidence that the road safety strategy is faltering is also highly debatable.

The reality is that Ireland has an excellent record in reducing road deaths. The number of road deaths fell from 472 to 162 in the 15-year period to 2012. In the four years to 2012 the number of road deaths has fallen from 279 to 162. The number of serious-injury collisions has more than halved, from 610 to 302. Ireland has the fifth lowest road deaths toll of any European state. The ambition is to bring the annual number of road deaths down to 124 by 2020.

I listened to Costello’s ideas for road safety reform on The Last Word on Tuesday.

Costello’s big idea was the introduction of mandatory driving instruction in our secondary schools, during transition year. Now who could argue with that? Isn’t education always a great thing? Isn’t that what our schools are for? Wouldn’t this be a modern and progressive thing to do, as well as having potentially wonderful practical benefits? Unfortunately, it didn’t appear that she had thought out the practical elements to this idea too keenly. Costello wants schools to hire driving instructors for practical instruction because, clearly, teachers do not have the skills required to do this. This would include bringing students out on the road for driving lessons “obviously in dual control cars” as she put it.

How often would instruction be provided? Who would cover the insurance? What if the transition year student was not 17 years of age — and very few of them are — the legal age for driving on a road? How much would the schools have to pay the instructors for their time and the use of their cars? How would they raise the money for this at a time of extreme budget cutbacks that has led in many cases to a reduction in the number of subjects for study to exam level?

She had no idea of how much her proposal would cost. Why should she bother with a trifling little detail like that though when she got the newspaper headlines and the broadcast airtime she sought? She had been seen to care about an important social issue and she had been seen to have an idea. Job done. She needs to raise her profile before next year’s European elections. Don’t forget that Costello — wife of the Labour party junior minister Joe — wasn’t elected to her position: she was handed it in February 2012 after Prionsais de Rossa retired as an MEP. That, along with Labour’s falling popularity, makes the likelihood of her being elected to the post next year unlikely. But it won’t stop her trying.

I’m sorry to pick on Costello, but too many politicians find it too easy to make broad sweeping statements, claims and demands without appearing to have too much knowledge as to what really needs to be done.

Education as to road safety is important of course but as it happens many schools do provide courses in that as it is, albeit not providing driving instruction. The reality, however, is that education only goes so far because some young people, no matter how much you tell them, have a tendency to be reckless or ignorant about the dangers of speed.

SO what are probably more important to road safety are enforcement of the laws as to behaviour, particularly in relation to drink driving, speed enforcement and penalty points, and better engineering of the roads and vehicles used on them.

Transport Minister Leo Varadkar recently published a new Road Safety Bill in which he proposed increasing penalty points for speeding and mobile phone use while driving. Novice drivers are to be banned from driving for two years if they accumulate six penalty points, whereas for more experienced drivers the total is 12. That is the type of thing that puts manners on motorists, as long as they fear being detected and punished. The real issue for Costello and politicians to address is whether there are enough gardaí on the roads and enough prosecutions taken. For example, the number of fixed-penalty notices issued for driving offences such as speeding and using a mobile phone was down 37% in the first four months of the year compared with the same period in 2012.

Here are some more of the statistics: The number of drivers caught speeding in 2012 was 224,937 which was a fall of almost 40,000 compared to the high of 2011. The number of motorists caught driving without a seat beat dropped from 28,725 in 2008 to 13,802 in 2012. Detections of mobile phone use fell from 41,343 in 2008 to 30,806 last year.

Was this down to better behaviour or an absence of gardaí on the roads? The board of the Road Safety Authority for example has said it is “deeply concerned about the resources available to An Garda for traffic policing”, particularly the drop of a third in the strength of the traffic corps, to 854 officers. Increasing the numbers of gardaí available to enforce the laws would seem like a better place to start than calling for unlikely to be implemented ideas that have not been thought out.

* The Last Word with Matt Cooper is broadcast on 100-102 Today FM, Mondayto Friday, 4.30pm to 7pm.