Readers' blog: We don’t need new laws. We need proper enforcement
It’s difficult to take Transport Minister Shane Ross seriously, given his previous life as a journalist and his current life as a populist politician.
Because of Dáil arithmetic, and not talent or skill, Mr Ross is the minister.
Minister Ross has, no doubt, been told by his department that his drink-driving legislation won’t change the road traffic accident figures one whit.
But the simple fact is that Irish people do not want their driving policed.
Speeding drivers must, by law, be advised where speed vans are likely to be positioned. The vans themselves are so brightly coloured that they can be seen from a kilometre away.
Drivers routinely flash their lights to alert other drivers of checkpoints, just in case they might be drunk, drugged, speeding, or engaged in criminal activity.
Garda Checkpoints Munster, a Facebook page set up to alert drunks, speeders, and mobile criminals to garda and speed van activity, has 59,000 members.
At 4am in every county in Ireland, drivers are racing on rural roads. Drink-driving laws will not change that.
The chances of meeting a garda checkpoint are now so low in rural Ireland that only a small proportion of banned drivers actually stops driving.
The solution lies in the office of a minister who would rather be seen introducing populist legislation than putting robust mechanisms in place to enforce it.
He has simply given victims of drink-driving fake news and false hope.
Unless road traffic legislation is robustly and unapologetically policed, people will continue to die needlessly on our roads.
We need more policing, not more law.
