The number of road deaths in the State could be reduced by at least 150 a year if road safety was brought into line with best practice internationally, the chief executive of the Road Safety Authority has said.
Noel Brett was speaking in Navan, Co Meath, at an event to mark a road safety initiative by students at St Michael's Loreto Convent, the school attended by four of five teenage girls killed in a bus crash in the town in May last year.
Sinéad Ledwidge (14), Aimee McCabe (15), Deirdre Scanlon (17), Claire McCluskey (18), and Lisa Callan (15) died when a Bus Éireann school bus crashed near Casey's Cross, on the Navan to Kentstown Road on May 23rd, 2005.
"The reality in Ireland today is that we lose 11 people per hundred thousand of population [ every year]. Best-practice countries lose six per hundred thousand. Last year, 399 people lost their lives on our roads. If we could get to where best practice countries are, we could reduce that figure by at least 150 people per annum," Mr Brett said.
So called best-practice countries in Europe include Sweden, Britain and the Netherlands.
Mr Brett said education, enforcement or engineering could not work in isolation to reduce road deaths, nor could road safety initiatives work without the "buy-in" of the public.
"It's important that every single person using our roads, whether as a pedestrian, cyclist, car driver or passenger take personal responsibility and understand what they can personally do to make our roads a safer place for all road users."
In an initiative led by the school's guidance counsellor, Francis O'Toole, girls who are members of the school's "Seedlings" group, set up to support survivors of the bus crash, have designed keyrings bearing road safety messages. They hope to raise €18,000 by selling 6,000 keyrings.
The proceeds will pay for a portable ventilator for the children's unit of the Louth/Meath Hospital Group.
Mr O'Toole called for Government funding for road safety training for transition-year students.
Local TD and Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, who was at the event, said the Government would "respond to what the national Road Safety Authority suggests", adding that the Minister for Education had already expressed openness to the idea.
The Minister said he believed the need for enforcement had never been more evident than at the weekend, when seven people were killed on the roads. "Obviously initiatives like this are very important. The safety council are working, the guards are working, but I think we have to get a little bit real about it and people have to start taking more personal responsibility themselves."
Anita McCluskey, whose sister Claire died in last year's crash, said she hoped the keyrings would remind people to take care on the roads. She said the Seedlings initiative had helped the girls through the past year.