Road safety, and still the carnage goes on

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Thursday July 27, 2006 15:03 by jim travers

Why the increase despite greater Garda visibility

The Gardai are being placed in a position where the whole responsibility of road safety is being placed on their shoulders and supported by the Road Safety Authority. According to Bertie, we re all to blame for the carnage so stand back and be prepared to be wipped and later fined for such blatent abuse of our road traffic regulations. Dont blame the government, they try and do their best but people insist in driving cars and causing damage. Read on

Fine Gael got the message, now can they do something about it?

So Fine Gael finally got the message about the problems on our roads, seven months too late for those who died in this unwanted carnage. It appears on the face of it, that if the government says it’s everybody’s faulty except theirs, then we can rest assure that the Gardai will give their stamp of approval on whatever is placed in front of them. We have gone year after year with another scam scheme that is supposed to put to rest the cause of road fatalities once and for all. How many years ago have I said it, and how recently have I said it on this web site that both the government and the Gardai are looking completely in the wrong direction when it come to addressing the real issues concerning road deaths. They are using soft targets as a method of calming public disquiet over their inability to come to grips with this issue. Penalty points, more penalty points all piled high in regulations by the book load, but still the carnage goes on. So what is wrong? Well quiet simply everything is wrong. We now have a government telling us that it’s our entire fault and that we should take more care. That’s a high flying joke when you hear of a government minister driving up the wrong side of a dual carriageway, up to his eyes in drink and its not Coke. Or what about the TD’s driving out of Dail Eireann with the mobiles stuck to their ears as the Garda on the gate gives them the usual take care, goodbye lads nod.

Oh ye, what about the new law on the use of mobile phones, what law you say, the law about not using a mobile phone while driving (those in power excluded, plus taxi drivers) a car? Oh that law, that’s the law the gardai will enforce as they coast around Christchurch with one hand on the steering wheel and yes the other hand holding a mobile phone. Your nabbed mate, oh ye, you can’t nab a Garda; you’ll have a hard time proving it. But don’t take my word for it, if a Garda stops you with a phone to your ear, then the Garda is right, you broke the law and you should be punished. A law for one and the enforcement of a law for another. A law for the rich and no mercy for anybody else who is unable to buy one’s way out of trouble.

So let us get back to road safety, you know that funny man (Conor Faulkner) who keeps insisting that all our problems are contained in the government’s unwillingness to allow car pooling, wait for it, in bus lanes. Well that’s part of our problem; there are so many so called motoring and road safety experts who spend more time jockeying to secure media time on the airwaves or in the newspapers without giving any real thought to what they are really proposing. If it grabs a headline, then the job’s well done. Simply put, if anybody is really interested in the proper practice of the rules of the road then why not push for a central city road safety compliance initiative to start with, where all drivers are monitored and punished for their blatant abuse of the rules of the road within those limits. This over time could be gradually extended beyond the city as people become more aware of what they can do and what they cannot. Now mirror image this in other cities and extend it towards every other city, town and village.

For example, a driver turns right at the bottom of Georges Street (no right turn) and is stopped and summonsed for making that illegal turn. Further down the road a taxi makes a U turn, across a single white line in the middle of the road and nothing is done as two Gardai pass by. Now while the car made an illegal move from George’s Street into Dame Street,, the offence did not endanger both pedestrians or the flow of traffic…….but the taxi did, and this is where all our problems suddenly become lost in a web of misguided enforcement and a lack of priority in road safety procedures.

Once again, on the opposite side of the road facing the Olympia, taxis and lorries obstruct the ability of people to board buses in safety. Elderly people are forced to walk beyond the bus stops in order to board buses. And let us not forget that a bus driver is under no obligation to allow passengers board the bus (despite foul language, reports to head office and at times assaults on other drivers) if the bus goes beyond the bus stop or the driver deems it unsafe because the area leading into, out of, or at, makes it unsafe for the driver to open the doors at the bus.
Now this goes on in our capital city every day of the week and nothing is done to control this lack of respect, courtesy and safety for other people. What’s more, the authorities are totally to blame for allowing the city to be a bumper ride method of operation for the sake of commercial interests.

The hype about road safety is nothing short of a national scandal and Gay Byrne should disassociate himself from an authority that is more about photo image shots for politicians rather than a true and meaningful concern to find solutions to resolve the carnage on our roads. The role of the authority appear to be centred around glossy advertising and shock treatment TV campaigns that modern television and video rental viewers see as mild, somewhat shocking but there again lacking in the gruesome effects experienced in some of the movies out on rental. It’s not working, are you listening, the campaigns are doing nothing except making some advertising and film production company lots and lots of money. So where does the authority go from here, hand out free DANONE yogurts at traffic light junctions with a warning attached to them that say if you drink this drink while driving then you are compromising road safety by using only one hand on the steering wheel. Will people listen?

Government says it will clamp down on learner drivers, but the same government handed out full driving licences to anybody who wanted one. You will get two penalty points for crossing a continuous white line in the center of the road, pick any road in Dublin and try to comply with the law. Bus lanes can be used by taxis once they are carrying passengers, ever see a taxi in a bus lane with nobody in it as a Garda stops the vehicle behind and summons the driver for using the bus lane? Ever try to decipher road marking as you drive along the road, only to find you are going in and out like a yoyo trying to stay in the correct lane as other vehicles wiz past you with not a care in the world, council lorries, fire brigades, ambulances, taxis, ups garda cars ah to hell with it, just go straight.

Over nine years ago I submitted a proposal to the then minister for transport recommending a number of initiatives that would help reduce our road fatalities while at the same time enable learner drivers to become more competent in their driving standards. What was his reply? YOUR PROPOSALS ARE VERY NOVEL. We now find the current minister proposing similar initiatives as if he stumbled across my proposals while cleaning out his locker. Why did it take so long to see the advantages in what I was proposing and why could the then minister have said “let me put this to our expert road safety people and let me get back to you about the logic in your proposals. For the sake of people’s lives let us see what we can do with your proposals to make them more effective or workable”. But no, NOVEL, goodbye. And now we see and hear proposals, which if implemented when first proposed would have save countless lives and brought our learner driver training system to a standard that would have provided a dividend today.

So what about speed?

It is a fact, speed kills. What we fail to recognise is that any speed will kill and not only or necessarily the speed of a motor vehicle. Cyclists weave in and out of traffic, up onto footpaths and straight across red traffic lights. Eleven and twelve year old’s cycle carelessly on footpaths as elderly or disabled people shiver and clammer to avoid the impact of an oncoming bicycle. Cycle lanes are made part of the footpaths with no discernable boundary where people can walk in complete safety. Cyclists move from road to footpath and back onto the road with not a single effort to enhance road safety for both themselves and the people they wiz past on the footpaths. Once again enforcement is non existent. Defective bicycles with no lights at the front or rear, no helmets worn by a significant number of cyclist and worse still, cyclists kitted out in racing gear, with their modern lightweight racing bicycles, cycling two abreast and cycling as unprofessional as an adolescent cycling a bicycle for the first time.
The manner in which our young people today, learn and apply the rules of the road when they are either in school or cycling their bicycle will be reflected in their driving habits in the future. How we train them to acknowledge that their responsibility in cycling and driving safely and carefully will help save innocent lives in the future.

And what about the speed signs? Side roads 80 KPH, lanes and alleyways 60KPH and the Naas Dual Carriageway 80……no 60..no 80 no 60 agh 50 no 80 again, but wait a 60KPH small speed sign just as you exit the Red Cow roundabout towards the city centre, low and behold a Garda speed check buried in the corner at Coca Cola…….on a road that could handle speeds up to and including 100KPH, as Gardai do speed checks at 6.30am on a Sunday morning. Now that’s what I call a total waste of resources. Get the picture?

Massive Garda plan underway to catch drunk drivers, all concentrated in Dublin or in other major cities as the carnage unfolds on side country roads, roads that are badly lit or signposted, roads that are half complete and left for months with pot holes and others. Nobody cares, nobody has a reason to care because the see the trust of any road safety campaign as the states indirect method of securing revenue out of regulations that have been designed to offer the motorist no meaningful opportunity to comply with the law. If a road is capable of handling a speed in excess of what it is set at, then that speed is used by the state as a method of extorting revenue from people purely on the basis that they cannot comply with the law governing that speed. This is happening throughout the length and breath of Ireland and nobody but nobody is asking the question, “Why is it allowed to continue”?

Driving schools are now in a push to secure road safety training contracts in schools for transition year students while the same schools recruit third level students (new licences) to give driving instruction during the summer months, or recruit part-time retired people or mothers with a bit of time on their hands as instructors because the hourly rate in McDonalds is better. If these companies are to be allowed provide tuition on road safety and driving standards in class rooms then those employed by the companies must be qualified to teach within a classroom environment. There is no point in having Joe Bloggs give a lecture in a classroom when the same Joe Bloggs could not train a monkey to jump if he was paid, never mind give driving instruction. Driving instruction is a low paid but high return profit for driving schools, which display a professionalism of driving standards but pay their employees rates that do not match the responsibility or standards required from them. If you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

Is the government really serious about road safety, do they honestly want to conduct a shake-up of driving school standards or are they pandering to the commercial interests of companies who wish to extract the maximum amount of profit from people while providing sub-standard services that are wholly based around cheap labour and technically unqualified staff.
We must ask the question “Is the government serious about road safety or is it using the road safety issue in order to implement laws that bring with them an easy source of revenue”.

To date we have see laws that were introduced with a lot of pomp and hype but failed because they were not being enforced. And this is the major problem we have when trying to reduce road deaths. Nobody takes the rules and regulation seriously, because people know that the whole system of road safety is being directed from a point of financial gain to the exchequer rather than for the purpose it is intended to resolve. If penalty points are such a huge deterrent in making people obey the law then why do we have to pay a double penalty in the form of a financial charge? Simple, it’s about revenue first and road safety second. Simple rules and regulations that can be enforced are not being enforced because the revenue take has to be worked for, whereas stopping cars on the Blessington Road for driving 10kPH over the 50KPH speed limit is much more financially rewarding and makes lovely reading when the statistics come out on successful road safety prosecutions. Now ye get the picture.

It’s like the council telling us we have to pay for our waste to be removed (it’s our duty) while all along the EU Directives are telling us it’s not our problem. Low and behold, waste disposal charges that should not have been there in the first place are now being reduced and in time removed. Tell that to the pensioner or unemployed person whom the councils hounded and threatened with court action only to find the same councils were told to compromise with a waver system.

Gaybo is gone; it’s just a matter of time and not a long time. He was a stool pigeon that was used as a public figure that would take the heat off people whose responsibility was to come up with sound and workable solutions to solving road safety problems. Sure what can Gaybo do, youth don’t listen to him, granny’s who swore by him and lived on his every word are dead and gone, even Rodge and Podge have difficulty remembering what role he played on radio and television. Give it to Bono or Niall Quinn….for what? The problem is not in the celebrity making a change happen, it’s about government addressing and solving the real issues that are at the heart of the problem. There are 1,658,972 penalty point reasons not to speed but the real answer is not to drive. Now I don’t mean do not have a car or tax and insure it, I mean, do not drive. Tax it, insure it and put petrol in it so that the government is happy with its take. Less money is needed for the hospitals and there would be no reason to recruit more Gardai, as the government privatises our public transport system and we once again are forced to pay increased fares, controlled by private companies and subsidised by you and me. Gaybo’s hands are tied by a political system that uses imaged initiatives to bolster ministerial images on a promise of change and results without having any real substance.

I read recently on an anti-social web site (antisocialbehaviour.eu) that Connex could be in serious breach of health and safety regulations by allowing their trams to be packed beyond capacity.
This is not a figment of someone’s imagination, it’s there every day to be seen as trams roll up and down the lines packed to capacity and at the best of times over it. Where are the health and safety officers in these instances? They will be there when a major disaster occurs so that they can wash their hand of any form of responsibility and blame the nearest or handiest target they can find. Why not blame Dublin Bus for not providing adequate buses in order to help Connex maintain its profits. Ye, its that easy……a minister gets on television and pronounces that he has instructed Dublin Bus to provide more empty buses on routes that service the trams rather than the public. When he tries to privatise the bus service he won’t be able to dictate political waffle to private companies whose only interest will be in profit first and everybody else later. See what I mean, late and ineffective solutions to problems that are staring us in the face right now.

Major road signs, ever notice that you are on top of them before you realise that the next exit is yours as drivers sway from one lane to another or slow down to a halt thereby causing tailbacks and once again other drivers to swerve in and out. Insurance companies once again proclaim that women are safe drivers, another scam to justify high premiums from the male population who by the way far out number women when purchasing motor insurance. You do not have to be a good driver, free from motor claims to contribute indirectly to motor accidents. Look at the taxis, weaving in and out as cars, buses and lorries do their utmost best to avoid collision. How many taxis have accidents, now look at the way in which taxis are driven, obviously someone is using defensive driving methods when avoiding direct contact with the taxis?

No wonder they want to blame motorists, have you ever tried to exit Dublin Airport and seek the junction to exit onto the M50. Ahhhhhhhhhhh, head down read the lane, head up, search for M50 exit signs, jump a lane, no get in the right lane, it should be the other one. No proper layout that allows a driver to drive in complete confidence and with due consideration to other road users, and it’s all over the country.

What really annoys me is that the Gardai, who are compelled to enforce these regulations are becoming more and more alienated from communities because they are enforcing something they see as being wrong over emphasised. If you were stopped and fined for driving 10 or 15KPH over the speed limit on a road that both you, the rest of the world and the Gardai themselves know is set at an incorrect and unreasonable speed limit, would you be prepared to help the authorities fight crime? But we must not forget that because we entrust our leaders to make the correct decisions for the good of everybody, we should also assume and be weary that they may be making decisions based on alternative agenda’s that can therefore directly promote increased alienation and resentment by the public towards our Gardai. The Gardai need all the friends they can get in the community in order to make the law work. What they do not need is to be sandwiched between what a government wants in order to maintain its power and the valuable source of information the public can provide the Gardai in their fight against crime.

Remember the time when you had a joking chat with your local Garda as the rain poured down. Remember when a Garda gave you a right telling off and remembered your face if you committed another offence, but this time with no excuses accepted. Long gone are the days, because Johnny was pulled over by a Garda patrol car and fined because his rear left light was not working properly. Damn guards, look at them, I would not pi** on them if they were on fire, nobody looks, smiles or gives a nod of support as their car passes by. Nobody cares, it’s their job, and they get well paid for it and its now them and us. They can literally do what they like and they will do you, if you give them half a chance. Sad, very sad for people who take on a job so that you and I can sleep peacefully at night but are increasingly becoming alienated from the public towards a more British or American form of policing. With a population of just over 4 million people, Ireland through the success of the Celtic Tiger has completely unturned its society and is destroying any meaningful relationship between the forces of law and order and the people. We are slowly becoming drones that go in and out, live in boxes and are afraid to step out of line for fear of the consequences. The most minor of things now make us criminals in the eyes of those who enforce the law.

So now we should be able to see that the wrong decisions based on the wrong enforcement is being pursued in a manner that escalates the situation further and makes positive and successful results in road safety continuously further away. There is massive road carnage on a greater scale in the UK but still their road safety laws are enforced to a stricter level of compliance than here in Ireland. The people in the UK have become more distant from their police force and the police themselves have bathed in a self proclaiming sea of superior authority. Is this what we really want for Ireland in the future?

It is time for a new shake-up of the road safety authority, a shake-up that allows it to make recommendation and decisions fully implemented without any political interference or control.If the government wants a road safety authority then it should support fully what that authority recommends irrespective of how painful to government pride it may be. Recommendations and decisions must not be taken that are acceptable to the pallets of ministers and their civil servants at the expense of people’s lives or their need to polish up a department in the wake of a general election.
Forget about the 10 over 50 and concentrate on enforcement that the public can readily accept as being totally in the interest of saving lives. The carnage must stop and will only stop when leadership of the correct kind is provided to the people. It makes no difference what party is in power, the carnage will still go on until the government of the day makes the right decisions based on the protection of life first and road safety second.