Safer roads - Road deaths reduced

IT is terribly sad that on the day figures showed a 19% reduction in road deaths for the year, Geraldine Clancy, 58, and her daughter Louise, 22, were killed in a road collision in north Cork. Yesterday’s tragedy underlines though, the almost random nature of death on our roads and the heartbreak it brings to families and friends of the victims.

Before yesterday’s Fermoy crash, 154 people were killed on our roads this year — a figure that stands at about half of the death toll expected a decade ago. This reduction, seen across every category of road user, has been achieved even though roads are ever busier and the opportunities to drive at the top end of speed limits ever more widespread. This represents a profound cultural change and a victory for public education campaigns — especially in the area of drink driving, an offence now almost exclusively confined to older generations.

It is not surprising that most deaths occurred on higher speed roads and that young drivers are four to five times more likely to be involved in crashes than older drivers. Let us do all we can to keep the graph going in the right direction.