Are the new Rules of the Road a step in the right direction or just a hastily cobbled mess, asks Paddy Comyn?
With the publication of the new Rules of the Road, the Department of Transport is apparently responding to lengthy criticism about the validity of the previous publication.
Calls for changes to the Rules of the Road stretch back over 10 years, and they were finally answered last summer when the Department published a revised draft Rules of the Road booklet.
This booklet contained details of the new metric speed limit, penalty points and on-the-spot fines, as well as providing information on the use of motorways, cycle lanes, bus lanes and rules applying where the Luas is in operation.
The fact that most of these features have been around for several years now highlights just how dated it was.
There are also amendments to include details on the Theory Test and the NCT. It also stated that all candidates taking the driving test are now expected to be familiar with basic technical checks that would be required on the type of vehicle they are using for their test.
A rather hurried four-week public consultation process followed in June 2006, a time when most people were more concerned with the World Cup rather than changing Irish legislation. The result was that October's amended document seemed to vary little from the initial proposals.
While there are welcome additions to the new Rules of the Road, such as the rather thorough explanation of offences that are liable to penalty points and the more comprehensive tuition on the use of motorways and roundabouts, the document still comes across as too technically written and in a language that has little relationship with its most important audience: 17-year-old first-timers.
The Rules of the Road can be dragged, kicking and screaming into the metric system: what it cannot do, it appears, is cover up the cracks of some of Ireland's more ludicrous regulations. Any 17-year-old can still fill in a form, do a theory test on a computer and shortly afterwards get into a car and drive.
After waiting in some cases a year to take their test, this new and inexperienced driver can then sit their driving test without having showany evidence of taking any lessons from a driving instructor, who themselves are as yet unregulated.
As we reported last May, Ireland's driver testing requirements don't compare well to any other jurisdiction.
In the Netherlands all drivers must attend driver-training centres before they can sit a test. In Germany, learner drivers must undergo 10 hours instruction in the classroom in driving theory and 10 hours instruction in an approved driving school.
Countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Luxembourg include night-time and motorway tuition in their driver training and in Sweden, regarded as the most safety aware European country, a driver on a provisional licence must be supervised by someone of at least 24-years-old who has had a licence for at least five years.
Italy goes further by requiring supervisors to have held their license for 10 years, while private tuition is banned in Spain, where learners must be accompanied by a state driving instructor.
Back in good old Ireland, if you have your second provisional licence you can drive unaccompanied. All this seems to show is that in the previous two years you were either not bothered to do a test or else you failed it, but now it seems you are deemed suitable to drive on your own, be it a large SUV or indeed a tractor.
And despite the fact that no provisional licence driver is permitted on the motorway, the fact that the M50 is essential for many Dublin commuters means that there are thousands ignoring this rule.
And staying with motorways, the rules regarding lane discipline and overtaking is a little ambiguous. While we are told to stay in the left-hand lane unless we are overtaking, we are later told that we overtake on the right only, unless "the slow-moving traffic queue on your right is moving more slowly than you are."
For anyone familiar with the M1 motorway, where the majority of drivers appear to stay on the right lane at 60km/h it would appear from this that we could undertake these cars without too much worry. We would not, of course, recommend or condone this.
Despite the introduction of random breath testing to the state, we persist with the highest permissible blood alcohol level in the EU.
There are countless pieces of evidence to show that levels up to and including this limit can impede driving ability, yet it remains unchanged.
The Rules of the Road are supposed to be something that we all use as a guide to driving. It should not be just the course material for the driving test.
However, this laboured and only slightly more user-friendly document just serves to highlight that until we get some of the basics right it will remain something of a comic book.