Fatal mistake to cut traffic corps - Road safety

THREE more people have died in traffic accidents — one a male pedestrian in Dublin and the others both young women who died after their car was in collision with a truck in Westmeath.

They bring to 145 the number of people killed on our roads so far this year — 26 more than the same period in 2015.

These deaths represent an unwelcome addition to the growing grim statistic of carnage on the roads. But to family and friends, the loss of their loved ones is a personal tragedy.

Asked recently about the rise in road deaths Transport Minister Shane Ross said he was “very concerned” and would investigate whether stricter measures would help.

It was a lame response, to say the least, and it ignored the fact that road safety has fallen low on the priority list for the Government. Pious mutterings of concern will do little to help the situation. Neither, necessarily, will stricter measures or harsher penalties.

Greater vigilance will. We have proved that already. In the late 1970s the number of annual road deaths was almost 600. In recent years we halved that figure twice-over with breath tests, speed cameras, penalty points, but the most important factor was the strengthening of the Garda Traffic Corps.

Believing — wrongly — that the road safety battle had been won, the Garda Traffic Corps was diminished in numbers.

That, in a very real way, was a fatal mistake.