Belt-up by Monday

The Minister for Transport is to push ahead with the delayed introduction of penalty points for not wearing seat belts despite…

The Minister for Transport is to push ahead with the delayed introduction of penalty points for not wearing seat belts despite pressure from gardai not to further extend the scheme. Despite a postponement in June, Minister Brennan has confirmed penalty points for not wearing seatbelts will be introduced from next Monday. Ian Noctor reports.

"Under the extended legislation," said the Minister, "drivers will be liable for a maximum of four penalty points if they do not wear their safety belt or if they allow a person under 17 years of age to travel unrestrained in a vehicle." Alleged offenders who accept a fixed charge of €60 (up from €25) when stopped by gardai will have two penalty points imposed on their licence. However, if they decide to contest the issue in court, they face a maximum fine of €800 and four penalty points.

The Minister insisted that the August 25th deadline would not be further postponed, saying the priority was to save lives on the roads. He cited the 40 per cent drop in road deaths since the introduction of penalty points last October.

While Gardai have not said they will not enforce the extended system, Austin Kenny of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors says his members are "dismayed to see such an unwieldy manual system being brought in and extended willy-nilly without a proper computer system to back it up."

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A centralised processing system for motoring offences in the Dublin Metropolitian Area has been up and running since the end of May this year. However, it's understood the computer system is still struggling to cope with a massive backlog of penalty point offences hanging over from the manual system. An estimated 16,000 of the manual tickets remain to be input despite the fact that eight additional gardai have been provided to cope with the remnants of the manual system.

In the rest of the country all motoring offences are still processed manually. If a motorist fails to pay a fine or acknowledge the alleged offence, then the garda must after the initial 28-day period issue a reminder that the motorist has now entered the second 28-day period which commands a larger fine and that , if the fine is not paid, a court appearance and double penalty points could follow. If this notice is ignored, the officer must go back a third time to arrange to bring the alleged offender to court.

Gardai outside Dublin are now calling for an accelerated introduction of the computerised system, to avoid time being further unnecessarily tied up with desk duties and to allow a more efficient operation of the extended penalty points system.

The extension of the system could have a dramatic effect on the number of detections each year. Each year gardai fine over 60,000 people for seatbelt offences. Without a seat belt three out of four people will be killed or seriously injured in a 30mph head on crash.

The National Safety Council estimates that wearing a seatbelt saves between 50 and 60 lives every year in Ireland. However chief executive Pat Costello says: "Despite a rise in the driver and front passenger wearing rate in this country, 57 per cent in 1999 to 72 per cent in 2002, Ireland still falls behind best practice countries."

With the introduction of penalty points for not wearing seat belts, it is the driver's responsibility to ensure anyone under 17 in the car is properly restrained. "Even if the driver has a seatbelt on but one of his underage passengers doesn't, then he or she is liable for penalty points for not carrying out this responsibility under law to ensure all occupants are belted up.

"However, if two or more children are not properly restrained, the offender will be given just one set of penalty points but will be fined for each unsecured child."

Costello says that he is astonished at the number of parents who allow children to travel unrestrained. "Tragically between 1996 and 2000, three quarters of child passenger fatalities were not wearing child restraints or seatbelts. In total 69 children under the age of 15 were killed in the five-year period - that's equivalent to the number of children in three primary school classes."

Despite improvement in our seatbelt wearing statistics, Ireland still lags behind many developed nations. "A 2002 study of seatbelt wearing rates in Scotland shows that 95 per cent of car drivers and 91 per cent of front-seat passengers wear seatbelts," says Costello. "However, the real problem in Ireland is in the back seat - only 20 per cent of rear-seat passengers are restrained compared to 78 per cent in Scotland."

In 2002 three quarters of all motorists in the US wore seatbelts. In states with police penalties for observed non-usage the figure rises to 80 per cent. In Britain, the message has been driven home even more effectively - there 90 per cent now wear seatbelts.