It's been a long time coming, but the rules of the road have finally been updated. David Labanyitakes a look at the changes
Twelve years ago, there were just 1.2 million vehicles on Irish roads. Today there are 2.2 million. Trying to squeeze these extra vehicles on to the roads during weekday rush hours creates a metal congestion collar around every Irish city and town.
Frustrated by congestion, some drivers are starting to lose the plot, prompting the inclusion of advice for how to handle road rage for the first time in the new Rules of the Road, published this week.
It replaces an obsolete 12-year-old document written for a State with an economy and infrastructure of a different era. Back then, motorway driving was confined to a handful of kilometres on specific routes. Today there are 280kms of motorway, a total that is expected to more than double this year.
The 1995 document also harks back to a time when agriculture had a more central role. In retrospect, it now seems almost quaint that a Government department would require tractor drivers towing a high trailer to perch a lookout person on the back of the trailer.
That this remained Government advice until last Wednesday morning now almost seems perverse: completely aside from the obvious impracticalities of driver and lookout trying to communicate using gesticulation over the engine noise.
It would be interesting to know if anyone has been injured after falling from a trailer while following this requirement and if so, what liability, if any, would attach to a government for making this questionable road safety requirement.
Another area where the new document has been significantly improved is in the clarity of its language. Gone is the legalistic jargon of the 1995 version and the new document is approved by the National Adult Literacy Association.
Meeting this plain English standard was a conscious effort by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) to make the Rules accessible to adults with reading difficulties, teenagers and people for whom English is not a first language.
However, within the 220-odd pages of the new Rules book remains a reference to one of the most obvious weaknesses in driver training: the freedom for drivers on a second provisional to drive unaccompanied.
That this flaw has remained unchanged for 12 years is an eloquent testament to the painfully slow reform of driver training.
The road traffic Act 2006 provides for this loophole to be removed. That is likely to happen later this year when the provisional licence is replaced by a learner permit system.
Noel Brett, chief executive of the RSA, said the updated Rules was published without waiting for changes to the learner permit system "because it would have been ethically and morally wrong to delay".
He also denied there had been political pressure to publish before the election or that the changes to driving training under the permit system would see the new Rules book quickly become dated.
"The original was seriously out of date. The updated Rules book is for all road users; for pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists. We wanted it updated as a matter of urgency. It is a live document and we will update it regularly." The expanded section on motorway driving in the new Rules reflects the massive development of Ireland's motorway network since 1995.
There are now about 270kms of motorway, and a good proportion of the 490kms of dual-carriageway will soon be redesignated to motorway with a 120km/h speed limit once the Roads Bill 2007 is passed.
At a stroke this will more than double the network. It will also force learner drivers wishing to travel between the major cities to seek alternative routes, as they are banned from motorways.
The section on motorway driving also stresses the importance of "understanding the purpose of each lane".
For anyone unclear on motorway protocol the Rules explain that motorists should travel in the left and only overtake in the right before returning to the left lane. On a three-lane motorway a driver can stay in a centre lane when the traffic is moving more slowly in the left lane.
Another new rule, which annoys hauliers, is that lorry drivers are banned from using the outside lane.
In step with the expansion of the motorway network over the last 12 years has come a proliferation of roundabouts. Roundabouts, particularly multi-lane ones, are confusing for many motorists, as evidenced by the fact that 26 holders of Irish driving licences have received penalty points for turning right on to a roundabout. The new Rules seeks to address this confusion through an expanded series of diagrams explaining lane approach and indicating sequence.
As anyone who commutes by car will testify, a by-product of trying to cram ever more vehicles onto an already congested network is road rage, which the Rules of the Road addresses for the first time.
Defining road rage as "uncontrolled anger than results in intimidation or violence against another driver", it suggests that if confronted by an apoplectic driver, don't react and resist the temptation to "speed up, brake, or swerve suddenly."
Only the Irish-, Polish-, Chinese- [Mandarin] and Russian-language versions will be available on the RSA website ( www.rsa.ie). The full English-language version will not be available online because the RSA says it wants to use sales to meet the costs of the initial print run of 50,000 books. The new Rules will be on sale in bookshops for €4 next week. By the end of the year a copy of the new Rules will also be sent to every household in the State, with the roughly €2 million cost being met by the Irish Insurance Federation.
Provisional drivers waiting for a test will not face questions on the new rules until the last week of April this year, according to the RSA. This will allow them to obtain and become familiar with the new document.
The new Rules book slots in under the education category in the Government's three "E"s strategy for road safety; the others being enforcement and engineering.
And while the current Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, deserves some credit for finally updating the Rules of the Road, and for bringing in mandatory breath testing, the legacy of neglect for road safety will require more than just plain English to resolve.
The early promise of penalty points to cut road deaths quickly ebbed as technical and resource problems undermined the system. Resourcing enforcement remains the key.