Scapegoating young motorists for road carnage is lazy and wrong

It’s typical. At the stroke of a pen some jumped-up bureaucrat proposes to put 120,000 people off the road and thinks that represents a good day’s work. The Minister – in this case Noel Dempsey – goes along with it and thinks he deserves a clap on the back.

Worse still, he gets it.
A raft of new measures was announced in the so-called Road Safety Strategy for 2007-2012 last week. Up to now, people on their second Provisional Licence were allowed to drive without a full licence holder in the car with them. In effect, and with the open collusion of the authorities, including the Gardai, this had turned into a system where people could drive on their own once they reached their second provisional.
Now, overnight and without warning, they were going to overturn this system – effectively changing the rules for in excess of 400,000 drivers.
It doesn’t matter that there had been no proper analysis of what causes accidents. It doesn’t matter how many people’s lives it was going to fuck up. It doesn’t matter that it may have had far-reaching negative social consequences. It doesn’t matter whether or not it was actually a sensible approach to take, at all – on any level. No one cares about any of that.
All that matters is that it played to the current hysteria. All that matters is that it made it look like they were doing something – when really a huge part of the problem is that the State has been failing miserably to fulfil its basic responsibilities in relation to road safety...
The knee-jerk response is to blame it on the drivers. Blame it on young drivers in particular.
Forget about the fact that roads are in shit condition all over the country. Forget about the fact that policing is bungled whether because of laziness or under-resourcing. Forget the fact that speed traps are placed in completely irrelevant positions – with the result that perfectly sensible citizens are hammered for going a bit over what is often a ridiculously low speed limit while a small percentage of high risk-takers drive like Michael Schumacher on winding country roads in the small hours of the night.
The government solution? Hit young drivers in general. It doesn’t matter that, in good faith, they have invested in cars to get them to work. It doesn’t matter that they might have to travel 15 or 20 miles in the morning – and there is bugger all public transport available as an alternative. It doesn’t matter whether or not they have a baby to get to a crèche in one direction, and a kid to get to school in another, before going a different route entirely to the office or the factory.
Worst of all, it doesn’t matter that, between them, the Government, the Department of the Environment and the Road Safety Authority have been unable to get it together to organise driving tests within a reasonable waiting period. Nor does it matter that the system is itself one that is full of holes.
Driving is not rocket science. I’ll go further. Driving is EASY. Any clod can do it. And anyway, people approach the test in a thoroughly cynical frame of mind. They do what they think the tester wants to see – not what they would do on a day to day basis on the road.
You could do away with the entire system of tests and licences (in fact there's the germ of a good idea there) and it’d be just as safe – or as dangerous – on the roads if you fail to get a couple of basic things across to car users.
Driving with a rake of drink on board hugely increases the risk of accidents. Don’t do it.
Driving at the edge of risk, in terms of the speed you travel at on the particular road you’re on, is also a very bad idea – if you're caning it, it only takes one unexpected occurrence to cause a potentially fatal accident.
Driving when you are very tired is also potentially fatal – if you nod off, you may be a goner, and who knows how many other people with you.
Driving and talking on a hand-held mobile is also dangerous – as is not concentrating or looking where you’re going in general.
Having a heart attack at the wheel is very, very dangerous (but, hey, there's not much you can do about it).
There’s a few more messages that need to be communicated, but you get the point. There’s lots of people with full licences on the road for ten, twenty or thirty years who do silly and dangerous things.
So – the issue isn’t about licences – or 'learner permits'. It’s about good roads, proper public transport, increasing awareness of risks; it’s also about not treating citizens as if they – or we, rather – are all stupid. And it’s about proper, rigorous analysis of the real causes of accidents – and not the massaging of figures, unscientific conclusions and general posturing that we are regularly treated to.
But intelligence, no that doesn't come into it. The bureaucrat's answer is more regulation. God help us…