Taxi drivers, who are currently exempt from wearing seatbelts, will soon have to belt up or face a fine and penalty points under new rules to be announced shortly by the Minister of Transport, Mr Brennan.
The decision to force the estimated 13,000 taxi drivers to belt up comes after a series of meetings between the Department and the National Taxi Council, which was established November 2003 under the chairmanship of former Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne.
At those meetings, representatives from the taxi drivers' unions opposed the move, and pressed for a more relaxed approach to be taken. However, Brennan has remained determined that the exemption would be abolished by September.
Mr Vinny Byrne, vice-president of the National Taxi Drivers' Union - the largest of the taxi unions - said that many of its drivers were against any legislation that would force them to wear shoulder belts, claiming it could impede their escape from attacking passengers, or could be used as a weapon against them. "We recommended that lap belts would be more appropriate," says Byrne. "The problem we have with shoulder belts is that they can be used as a strangulation device and, if a driver is under attack, he needs to grab his keys and get out of the vehicle as quickly as possible."
The union says that it receives reports of six attacks by passengers a week on its members, and that this number is continuing to grow.
Mr Tommy Gorman, the union's president, said that, although many of his members "will have reservations about complying" with the new rules, there was a growing feeling that such a move was inevitable: "The insurance companies have been pushing for this for a long time. And recently there was a court case where a taxi was hit by a van and the judge reduced the amount of the claim by 20 per cent because the driver was not wearing his seatbelt." The judge had ruled that the passenger in the taxi had not been a risk to the driver and therefore the driver should have been wearing his belt.
Despite the imminent lifting of their exemption, taxi drivers will still continue to press for the use of lap belts rather than the three-point shoulder seatbelts. "We will continue to raise our reservations," says Mr Gorman. "We have no information to date that any taxi driver has been injured because he was not wearing his seatbelt."
On the contrary, he says, the union has plenty of evidence of injuries to its members because they were wearing their belts when their passengers attacked them.
The Department of Transport says the move was part of an overall strategy to improve road safety. Also, in its as yet unpublished three-year road safety document, it states: "All adult drivers and passengers in vehicles equipped with seatbelts will be required to wear them, except where medical conditions dictate otherwise."
This will copper-fasten the rule relating to taxi drivers. However, it is believed that, at present, the Department is stopping short of forcing the gardaí - the only other category of adult drivers and passengers who are exempt from wearing seatbelts in cars - from being forced to belt up.