Will Gay make a difference?

dublin | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Wednesday April 19, 2006 00:32 by jim travers jimtravers at eircom dot net

penalty points-just another stealt tax

The appointment of Mr Gay Byrne as Chairman of the Road Safety Authority must be a welcomed appointment if only to see in time a respected public figure walk away from a charade that appears to have more emphasis placed on securing revenue rather than saving lives. We all know Gaybo will give it his very best, once what he is doing or saying finds a pleasurable interest and approval by those in the corridors of power. Some like him,some hate him but one thing is sure, if Gay walks away then we can safely assume that there is something rotten and wrong with the institution and the bodies surrounding it that alligiedly place the interest of every citizen of the state as aa priority above all else.

The appointment of veteran broadcaster Gay Byrne will, in itself force both the minister for transport and the government into treating the issue of road safety on a higher scale of priority than before.

Mr Byrne has publically stated that he will not fade quietly away should both the minister and government be found wanting in their efforts to reduce the carnage on our roads. We have seen a consistant emphasis being placed on SPEED, as if speed alone was the main factor in the fatalities we see today. Speed, no matter what speed, has the potential to kill, therefore we must look at the other underlying factors that cause drivers to use speed to such destruction.

Firstly, the blame must be spread right across the board from insurance companies who willy nilly provide insurance cover once the highest premium has been paid, to local authorities who set inappropriate speed limits for roads that in turn force drivers to break speed limits intentionally or at the best of times unintentionally.

Speed limits set for main roads are consistantly seen lower than the speed limits set on roads of less importance, country roads and lanes. So as not to bore you further lets look at the N11 and the M50. The N11 speed limits go from 50KPH to 100KPH without any logical reason for these reductions. You then reach the M50 and you find the speed limit goes up to 120KPH but you find that the geatest danger for accidents is at the M50 where all traffic converges and traffic queues result in drivers breaking and speeding up, lane jumping and attempting to reach maximum speed with all the dangers around them. Still the N11 is long, quiet, open spaced and jumps up and down like a jack in the box. And low and behold what do we find when the speed limit suddenly plunges from a higher speed to a lower speed, Gardai with speed cameras conducting a turkey shoot while people are dying on roads of lesser importance.

We also see taxis in Dublin city breaking ever rule that is seen in the rules of the road handbook. U turns, reversing up one way streets, two fingers to those who make objection and an implied belief that the city is theirs once money has to be made. The use of hazard lights has taken on a new meaning for taxis as they stop at pedestrian lights, bus stops and main junctions.

It appears that the Gardai are told to step down in the city centre on Thurs,Friday and Saturday nights while other Gardai are placed on the Long Mile Road where there is very little trafffic late at night and the chance of a serious fatality on the same stretch of road has very little documentative evidence of any fatalities over very many years.

Mr Byrne must ask the question, is the government interested in road safety first or the gathering of revenue that results out of the indiscriminate placing of traffic controls on roads that do not require these controls as a priority.

Penalty points, court apeareances and lets not forget the the greatest deterrent of all (in government eyes) a financial penalty that up to now does not appear to be working.Thirty two new penalty point offences and still more people have been killed on our roads than for the same period last year.

There is a quiet concern within the Gardai that they are being isolated from the public by legislation they are compelled to enforce but know that the same legislation is seriously flawed and at best not thought our properly. The Gardai need to be part and parcel of all our communities, for it is in this unity that the Gardai can operate to the approval and support of all law abiding people.

Have you noticed higher speed notice signs of a greater diameter placed on roads followed by lower speed notice signs of a lesser diameter further down the same road. And once again low and behold the Gardai are place behind these lower signs. N7,N11 and the rest.

Driving schools, their standards are once again quetionable espicially when they employ students and retired people who have either just recieved their driving licences or have a bit of spare time to earn peanuts for their efforts.And dont forget if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. Take a four day driving instructors course, pay your fee and walk away with a certificate that has as much value as a wrapper off an ice cream, its all Irish style and its all about money.

It is time we looked at the other reasons for the continued rise in fatalities on our roads and stopped looking at the old relaible called SPEED as the reason for all our problems.

Making speed the main reason for road fatalities is the best way of genetating revenue on the back of other peoples grief and loss. We have consistently been lectured about speed while the authorities have reduced speed limits as an increased level of Garda checkpoints have been placed on our main roads, but still the carnage goes on. This should tell is that there is something fundimentally wrong with our analysis of the reasons for the increase in road fatalities. If vested interests sat back and placed the preservation of life as a higher priority over the securing of profit, then our road fatality numbers would show a dramatic decline in response to the committed concern.

As a professional driver with an advance driving standard, a former driving instructor and a trainer with over 30 years motor industry experience, I recognise and appreciate that speed is a serious problem that results in major road fatalities.But speed is not the main factor that leads to road fatalities. Mr Byrne says that everybody has an answer in resolving our road fatalities but Mr Byrne must also recognise that The National Road Safety Authority and the AA (people with all the logical answers to our problems)have consistantly over many years preached to both the public and previous ministers on the actions that should be taken in order to resolve our problems, but still after years of representation,change, rejuggling and further rejuggling, things have got worse.

We see very many people and businesses jumping and scampering to be the ones who can provide all the answers at a price. The driving schools say more training and minimum driving instruction lessons must be imposed on those seeking to pass the driving test but still driving schools over many years have shown no professional standard results for their years of dominating the driver training instruction environment in ireland. Motoring orginisation have led us to believe that they speak on behalf of the motorist but still the motorist is being screwed at every chance that can be made in order to extract more revenue from him or her.

Car pooling is another hair brained, idiot idea for helping to reduce our traffic congestion problems. One reason for this is that if you open bus lanes to cars then you restrict buses from the free movement of moving people from A to B in the least possible time. We want to promote people using public transport and in the same breath some AA spokesperson says car pooling is the way forward. Does he honestly think that motorist would abide by the condition of four to a vehicle or does he forget about the Michael O Leary charade of having a taxi licence so that he can use the bus lanes. And by the way did he ever have to relinquish the licence in the face of public knowledge of him using such a licence while never actually using his vehicle as a taxi.It is suggetions and proposal like these that make a sham of our desires to reduce the road carnage because those making suggestions make them purely on the basis of their belief that they are speaking for us all. Fair play to Michael O Leary, he exploited a loophole that possibly others are exploiting today. Possibly the reasons for him keeping his licence is that Mr O Leary would not be too impressed by those who take from him what they provide to others once they keep a low profile.

We spent a billion Euro on a transport system(Luas) that remains in a fixed position while at the same time governmnet reduced state support to a national transport service that has the potential to move as the population moves, without delay and without serious financial cost. We try to reduce traffic congestion while some sections of our representative orginisations do their utmost best to indirectly increase it by by making suggestions that will allow vehicles to have unrestricted access over others into the city. Do they say this just to be heard or to secure valuable media air time or publishing space free.

Taxi's have proven this as they cause traffic congestion in the city at night on roads that realistically should not have traffic congestion except for the fact that taxis are stopping two abreast or stopping anywhere they so wish in order to conduct their business. And then we wonder why learner drivers or other drivers speed up or stop, break traffic lights, crawl at red traffic lights for no reason at all.

We need to condition people into believing and complying with basic rules and regulation that will have a knock on effect throughout the whole road network. In other words if drivers stops and parks at bus stops therby restricting elderly and disabled people from boarding buses then fine them.If a taxi does an illegal turn on a street thereby ocntributing to a potential accident, fine him or her.
If the Gardai placed more emphasis on the correct upholding of the rules of the road by all road users(and also pedestrians) and stayed away from mounting checks on roads that have no major road fatality significence then people would be better conditioned in driving to an acceptable standard on every road no matter where it is.

I am telling you now we are directing all our energy at the wrong causes of road fatalities purely because they are far easier to place the blame and secure impressve statistics. They are also a far far easier method of securing revenue without having to work for it.

Mr Byrne has a long hard road ahead of him that without doubt will shuffle the feathers of somebody
if not everybody no matter what he does. So long as he does not direct his criticism at those within the vested interest lobby whose business prosper on the public concern of road fatalities,then he will sleep at night in peace. If he can direct all his energy at the ordinary road user and suggest legislation that condems the motorist to purchase a vehicle, pay road tax, insure it, fill it with fuel but leave it at home and take the bus, then Mr Byrne will have achieved exactly what our government would like to see us all do, support the state and get feck all back from it.

Get your daughter or son some driving lessons, pay for their test and then pay for their driving licence. Purchase a nice small car for them, pay their insurance and dont forget the road tax and then tell them that there is so many inconsistencies in our road regulation and the enforcement of those regulations that they will be off the road with 12 penalty points before they can say jumping jack flash.

And lets not forget that the Gardai themselves cannot drive at the current road speeds because they also feel as if they are trying to push a snail down a road fit for a jumbo jet.

By asking the Gardai to uphold something that is flawed in its nature, is short of causing a greater division and wedge between the public and the outstanding work of the Gardai every day of the week. We all want to reduce road fatalities and we all want to make our roads safer for all our people, but we cannot have a situation where regulations are in force that contribute more to the coffers of local government or the exchequer at the expense of real road safety iniatives and peoples belief that what is in place is in the interest of all the people and not an end of year financial accounting statement that showns a profit at the close of the financial year.

It is time we looked at the overall picture instead of looking at a snippet in a corner that is attractive to the eye.