Road safety in 2006

Killers on the road
The appointment of Gay Byrne as chair of the Road Safety Authority certainly changed the dynamic. He put it up to Minister Martin Cullen and Cullen said yes sir no sir three bags full.

Mind you, the roads didn’t look any safer early on, and the normal attrition was punctuated by some spectacular tragedies as when four Latvians died in a crash at a notorious Donegal blackspot. Two cars were involved. The man responsible was one of the Latvians. The car belonged to his Irish employer and he had taken it without permission.
The tragedy cued an outbreak of self-flagellation in the Irish media bemoaning our bullish economy that had lured them here. But facts are facts and in May it emerged that to that date, foreign nationals accounted for one road death in three in Ireland in 2006.
By July we heard that ‘drunk driving convictions’ were up by 23%. This was followed by the usual static and blather, much of it about the perceived Irish attitude to drinking and driving.
Actually, it was simply a result of more checkpoints. It hardly marks the kind of descent into anarchy suggested by the press. On the contrary, a scientist might even suggest it showed a slight decrease since the Garda Traffic Corps was increased in numbers by 30% over the same period...
Well, as you know, all Garda activity in Ireland is part of one Operation or another. And we hear about them all. PR, PR, PR. That’s how you maintain the law. So, on October 18 the Gardai announced another new drive to cut road deaths. This was going to be hard and objective and boy you better watch out. The usual PR stuff.
Next day three 17-year-olds died in Tipperary and Dublin, followed within 24 hours by five more in Monaghan…
Exactly why the penny hasn’t dropped is beyond me and most rational people. Instead of actively targeting the key high-risk drivers and locations, the Gardai rely on publicity stunts and tough talk. And people keep on dying on the roads.
Some day they’ll realise, it’s not about PR. It’s not about one glass of wine either, despite what a technically questionable piece of research says. It’s not about our behaviour in general. It’s about how people behave behind the wheel, about how some people are so stupid and disconnected from the truths that govern life that they put their lives and the lives of others at grave risk and don’t even realise they’re doing so.
But for now the authorities are going to get more and more coercive and reactionary on this. When their policies fail, their reaction is to keep on with the same policies, only more so. Which means they’ll only get the same results…only more so. It would be a farce if it wasn’t a tragedy.