The National Safety Council has called for a new approach to road safety which would focus on reducing accidents at a community level.
Such an approach would heighten people's "sense of guilt" at "the ongoing carnage" and force an exploration of "causes and remedies", the chairman of the National Safety Council (NSC), Mr Eddie Shaw, said in Galway yesterday.
His comments were made at the launch of a new award scheme by Prince Michael of Kent, a member of the British royal family.
A community approach might help to identify dangerous drivers, or people who drove habitually with excess alcohol, the NSC chairman said.
"Crashes do not occur 'on a national level', they occur on the way to school, on the way home from the pub, at a dangerous junction on the edge of the town," Mr Shaw said. "They are local problems, requiring local solutions."
Up until lunchtime yesterday, the death toll on Irish roads stood at 57, which was just three lives fewer than on the same day in 2001. There was a total of 411 fatalities last year, and 415 in 2000. In addition, about 1,000 people were injured every month, Ms Caroline Spillane, spokeswoman for the NSC, said.
Of those 12,000 injuries each year, up to 3,500 are serious, in that they involve brain injury or loss of a limb.
Young male drivers are the highest risk group, and the highest risk period each week runs from 4 p.m. on a Friday to Sunday.
"Three o'clock on a Sunday morning is the peak time for road traffic accidents,and there is a very high level of single vehicle accidents over the weekend," she said.
Wearing of seatbelts was relatively low, despite the legislation, she said.
About 57 per cent of drivers wear seatbelts, and only 20 per cent of back seat passengers use them.
This was particularly alarming, given that many of these back seat passengers were children. "People don't recognise their own role in road safety," she said.
Prince Michael of Kent, who is patron of a similar award scheme in Britain, said that in his experience the business sector - particularly the motor industry - played a key role in reducing road crashes and in raising awareness of road safety.
