Limiting car speeds, whether by GPS speed governors or other means is not the way to reduce road deaths - the answer is driver training, argues Conor Twomey.
The argument has often been made that if you want to reduce the number of road deaths, why not simply limit how fast our cars can go?
After all, if a car is limited to 120km/h, then there is absolutely no chance of it spinning off the road and killing everyone inside, right? Erm, wrong. Cars can kill at any speed. It's driver skill and behaviour that needs to be addressed.
Speed is the whipping boy for every road death in Ireland, it seems. But, if speed is such a killer, then why are motorways - the fastest roads in the State - statistically the safest.
A lot of people are getting killed on smaller roads at speeds much lower than 120km/h, mostly because they are driving beyond their ability and not responding to the hazards around them.
Even if a driver misses a turn and flies into a field, speed is often cited as a contributory factor in the crash. This is a copout, for clearly driver error is the real reason.
Speed is what gets us from A to B in a short period of time. To make speed-restricted cars feasible, either you put a limited top speed on cars or you opt for a far more costly system of policing car speeds in every situation using GPS systems to map a car's location in a particular speed zone. This would immediately solve the problem of speeding, but would the number of road deaths drop overnight?
Hardly. Such a move would undoubtedly lead to less focus by the Garda on policing driving habits. In turn, this will give drivers broader scope than ever to drive how we please, undertaking, overtaking in dangerous places (and without enough speed to complete the manoeuvre in time) and generally behaving like hooligans.
Driving through any city in Ireland, any day of the week, exemplifies how drivers behave when there's little or no chance of retribution - and little or no speed involved.
Bus lanes, "No U-turns" signs, yellow boxes and traffic lights are all perpetually ignored as drivers press on towards their destination, uninhibited by such irritations as the rules of the road. What's more worrying is that these GPS tracking systems would not only know how fast we're going, but also where we're off to and when. The reason we love our cars so much is because of the sense of freedom they give us, free from the prying eyes of Big Brother.
For a more enlightened approach, take a look at Germany. The most orderly and strait-laced nation on the earth doesn't just turn a blind eye to speed. Attempt to speed in a town or populated area and you will soon be reminded of the error of your ways by ever-vigilant police.
Yet there are vast open stretches of de-restricted autobahn all over Germany, where drivers exceed 160km/h and yet live to tell the story. They have managed to see past the short-term "quick-fix" idea that it's all down to speed and instead work on driver behaviour in all its guises.
According to a 2003 study, the HSE found that around 28 per cent of road fatalities, or 85 individual deaths, can be attributed to a driver being under the influence of alcohol; so why not fit alcohol breath testers to the key fob of every car on the road and require a clean test before ignition?
This would prevent anyone from driving drunk and would help save a lot more lives than forcing us all to drive around like sheep.
Of course the problem with this, and every other safety measure including speed limiters, is that the Irish will always find a way around it.
After close to a millennium of colonial and/or Catholic church rule, it's part of our nature to flout authority and get away with whatever we can, as often as possible.
In a matter of minutes, your GPS antenna would mysteriously fall off. An air pump would overcome the key-fob problem. And your local mechanic would stick a screwdriver in the speed limiter control box, "by mistake". Status quo will be restored.
Road safety has become a media focal point of late. Rightly so, if it save lives and awakens us to the problems of bad driving.
Yet quick fix solutions such as speed limiters are no different from other half-baked crusades against cigarettes and obesity.
These crusaders will need to outlaw cigarettes, ban fatty food and make medical check-ups and exercise mandatory if they are to fulfill the need to protect us from ourselves.
They can, after all, back it up with statistics: surely it makes sense to ban cigarettes, which contribute nothing to the country except to help 20 Irish cancer patients to their graves on a daily basis.
The public response, of course, would be predictable: "What an invasion of our civil liberties. What is the world coming to that we can't eat and smoke and die when we please?"
The death toll on our roads is unacceptable, but there's not a simple answer to the problem.
These deaths are caused by numerous problems and faults that should not simply be swept up in some anti-speed campaign.
While 368 lives are lost needlessly on our roads every year, would advocates of speed limiters be as keen to see a complete prohibition on drink, cigarettes and a mandatory rule on physical exercise introduced?
All these contribute to daily deaths and enormous social problems, but we are wise enough to know that the issues surrounding them are too complicated for a simplistic prohibition to resolve.
We need to face the same reality when it comes to dealing with road deaths.