Road Traffic Bill - Road safety legislation welcome

The proposal to permit random breath testing of drivers, and on-the-spot convictions for drink driving offences in certain instances, should be warmly welcomed.

The option of accepting an on-the-spot conviction will apply only to first-time offences and, even then, only to people who have an alcohol reading under a certain threshold.

A kind of industry has been allowed to develop within the legal profession in helping people to beat convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol. Many people got off due to some technicality or other, rather than because they were not driving while impaired.

The whole thing was allowed to develop into a lucrative game for the legal profession as well as a kind of road roulette in which law-abiding drivers and their passengers were compelled to put their own lives at risk in venturing forth on our roads at certain times.

This has been undermining our legal system by effectively encouraging extremely dangerous anti-social behaviour that has cost many lives of those irresponsible people who drove after drinking too much alcohol, as well as the lives of totally innocent people who committed no crime at all. They had the misfortune of arriving at the wrong place at the same time as some irresponsible drunk.

The conference of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors was told yesterday that gardaí have trouble getting doctors to come to garda stations at night to take samples from those suspected of impaired driving.

Random breath-testing and on-the-spot driving bans will not eliminate the abuse of technicalities, but the changes should improve the process by speeding up enforcement and helping to unclog the courts.

A great many people have been avoiding conviction after failing breathalyser tests. Under the new system, however, those first-time offenders who contest prosecution by going to court will risk double the penalty. The likelihood is that a great many people will accept their penalty, especially if availing of the on-the-spot conviction saves them court time and unwelcome publicity. This should leave the gardaí with more time to concentrate their resources on fighting the other cases.

The new legislation will also cover the use of hand-held mobile phones while driving. This has been promised for years, but its implementation has been frustrated by one thing after another. Yet there will undoubtedly be serious reservations about plans to privatise speed cameras.

Conor Faughnan of AA Roadwatch made an astute suggestion that President Mary McAleese should refer the Road Traffic Bill to the Supreme Court as a means of avoiding a plethora of court challenges.

Experience has shown that many people have been prepared to fight all the way to the Supreme Court. There would possibly be a number of aspects of the new legislation that might be contested all the way, which would mean that lower courts would become tied up as they waited for a ruling in cases being appealed.

Referring the legislation to the Supreme Court before singing it into law would have the advantage of preventing an amount of unnecessary litigation, because once the Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of the legislation, it cannot be challenged again.

This would have the advantage of affording certainty to aspects of the legislation that might otherwise be challenged, and it would undoubtedly help alleviate the pressure on our courts.