The accident scene still haunts the garda. While paramedics were attending the young driver, he took a walk around the car and in the darkness, almost fell across the body. "No one knew she was there - she'd been thrown through the back window. She was only 17 and she was beautiful.
"Afterwards all I could think was, it was so totally unnecessary. Someone had seen the driver 10 minutes before that, speeding, all over the road. I begged and pleaded for that witness to come forward but he didn't, so when it went to court, the young fellow was convicted only of careless driving. He got a £350 fine and walked free. Given the circumstances, he might as well have shot her. Yet her family didn't even want to see him go to court".
It's part of what we are. A feckless youth in legal possession of a lethal weapon; a witness with no sense of duty, either to society or to a dead girl; a grieving family who mistake forgiveness for justice and perpetuate the cycle; a legal system under which "careless driving" is a footling offence, valued at less than a week's wages.
"The young lad was doing what young lads do," said locals. "It was an accident, one of those things."
But could this case - and the many like it - ever be described as an "accident"?
How would the court, or the locals or the media, have responded if the driver had been waving a loaded shotgun around a crowded street?
Publicly, the Garda stance is to repeat the good news. They must defer to their political masters and may not question Government decisions.
So you want statistics? Fatalities are down to 415 last year; in the early 1970s, the rate was about 600 a year, with far fewer cars on the roads. But there's more to be done.
Should there be greater enforcement? "We police by the consent of the people. If we decide to deal with this by enforcement, aggressively, we don't know what the public's tolerance level is and we can achieve nothing without public co-operation".
Do they perceive links between extended pub hours and late-night accidents? "There's no evidence to support that".
Privately, it's a different story. The Garda has much to be frustrated about.
Statistics? Our death rate is still twice that of Britain.
Drink-driving is as popular as ever - arrests are up to 12,000 from 8,000 in 1999 with 60 per cent of those tested showing twice the legal limit; more than half of all drivers break the speed limits and seat-belt compliance is as low as 40 per cent in some areas
Resources? "We need more resources. We need more visibility," says a senior garda. "You could travel many a mile in this country without ever seeing a garda."
Resources spread thinly mean the focus is constantly shifting. "There's no coherent plan," says a midlands garda. "One week they're shouting for more speeding tickets, the next for more drink-driving arrests.
"Dublin is on every Monday morning to see how many tickets were issued - that becomes very urgent if there have been a few bad accidents over the weekend. But once they have their stats, they're happy. They can say they've done their bit."
The law? Penalty points - the one measure that could make the critical difference to driver behaviour - cannot work without the integrated technology needed to link the Departments of Finance, Justice and the Garda. This, according to political sources, is still only at consultancy stage although the points system features in the forthcoming road traffic Bill.
Random breath-testing, according to the same sources, is not included in the Bill - despite its dramatic effect on outcomes in Australia - while evidential breath-testing is already two years behind its target date.
"And though statistics show there is a fair amount of repeat offending among drink-drivers, there is no requirement on them to show that they've changed their behaviour. A drunk driver - a fine man, but with a drink problem - drove into a wall near here a month ago and killed himself. He'd been pulled for drink-driving only two weeks before that. And about a year before that, he was in court for the same offence and got off on a technicality. In this system, you pay the fine, get your licence back and off you go. But what has changed?"
As for the National Car Test, introduced with much fanfare and no cost to the Exchequer, it's a "nonsense", says one observer. "Only one per cent of accidents was and is attributable to vehicle problems."
Worse, because there is no provision for the mandatory destruction of failed cars, many end up back on the roads in the form of "company" cars, driven by so-called joy-riders.
Meanwhile, though young, male drivers are known to be the biggest danger on the roads, the licensing system continues to be a "complete and utter joke," in the words of a garda.
"Where else would you find a situation where a fellow sits a driving test, fails it, then get back into his car and drives home?"
The test itself evokes nothing but contempt from garda∅ who describe it as "hopelessly unfitted to everyday driving conditions" but having passed it, drivers as young and inexperienced as 17 can drive powerful cars without restrictions of any kind. Across the Border, drivers must show an R plate and may not exceed certain speed limits.
With waiting times for tests up to 40 weeks in some areas, unqualified drivers have an effective amnesty.
In a different division, a garda is leafing through the files of this year's fatalities. "To save lives is not as easy as people believe. Not every death is preventable by having a squad car on every corner," he says. There are the heart attacks that lead to multiple deaths; a couple of suicides; the people who run on to the road without looking; the local "characters", fond of a few drinks and prone to weaving through traffic or lying down on the road.
But for the other half, it's a catalogue of alcohol, all-night raves, tiredness, speeding, and - again and again - reckless overtaking manoeuvres that finally end up under a lorry or head-on with an oncoming car.
For every death last year, there were four serious injuries, defined as injuries of a profound, life-changing kind, such as brain, spinal or the loss of a limb.
Anyone who has ever walked through a ward of the National Rehabilitation Hospital in D·n Laoghaire is unlikely to forget the sea of young faces, the lives - and the families - that have been savagely altered by someone's stupid, preventable action.
It's in the culture, say the garda∅; they believe they're doing their part. As to whether the legislators are merely "dancing around it", as one garda put it, or really mean business, is up to their constituents to decide.
"Millions of us love speed, partly because of the thrill, partly because it means a boring journey can be completed more quickly. And partly because the less time we spend travelling, the more we can do. Speed enriches our lives. Speed makes us cleverer."
Jeremy Clarkson, Sunday Times columnist
"Car crashes are the number one killer of young men. The primary factor was speed."
NRA Young Drivers Study
"Being caught by the guards appeared to be the single biggest barrier to risk-taking in men of all ages."
The NEHB report
"The annual cost of accidents in Ireland is estimated at close to £800 million."
Economist Peter Bacon, in a 1999 report for the NSC
