The political will to enforce road safety is essential if fatalities are to be reduced, writes Michael McAleer, Motoring Editor
If the prime minister of each of the 25 EU member states were to lose a child in a crash, would the issue of road safety finally get the political attention it deserves?
While this recent comment by Finnish MEP and former world rally champion Ari Vatanen to The Irish Times was clearly aimed to be provocative, his point is not lost: road safety policy is at best reactionary.
As the number of deaths so far this year rose to 31 and road safety activists aired their frustrations in the media, the Attorney General finally announced this week - six years after it was first proposed - that the Garda could indeed operate a random breath testing system to tackle drink driving.
Alongside this, 31 new driving offences that will incur penalty points were added to the four introduced in 2002. At that time the Government proposed to have 69 offences incurring penalty points in place by 2003.
So what do we know about the terrible fatalities on our roads? Road traffic crash statistics, compiled by the National Roads Authority (NRA), show 36 per cent of fatalities happen at night or early in the morning, when only a tiny percentage of maximum traffic volumes are on the road.
The statistics also confirm what we already suspected - that the worst time of the week for road deaths is at weekends.
The most incredible statistic, however, is that in 2004 36 per cent of all fatal crashes involved only one vehicle, an increase of three percentage points on 2003. Single-vehicle crashes, involving no other road user, are most strongly associated with drink-driving and/or speeding.
As to the official cause of most crashes, the contributory factor most commonly listed by gardaí in their reports is driver error. This was deemed to be the cause of 88 per cent of all crashes in 2004. According to a survey of motorists' behaviour at the end of last year by FBD Insurance and Advance Pitstop in association with Waterford Institute of Technology, 86.9 per cent of motorists described themselves as excellent, very good or good drivers.
The statistics and the daily corteges to graveyards suggest Ireland's drivers are not as competent as they think.
So what needs to be done? There are three basic areas on which Government road safety policy should concentrate: enforcement, education and engineering. All three must be addressed if we are to reduce road deaths both in the short term and in the future.
Enforcement is the great short-term solution, the quick-fix that's useful for politicians under pressure. Yet it requires much more than high-profile announcements and weekend blitz campaigns to make any lasting impact.
Take random breath testing. Australia is often heralded as the great example of the ability of random testing to reduce drink-driving and thus road deaths. Yet, according to road safety reports from the Australian Department of Transport, when it was first introduced in the state of Victoria in 1976 "it enjoyed only limited success in deterring drink-driving due to the style in which it was implemented. This was a rather low level of enforcement interspersed with periods of high intensity blitzes."
RESEARCH CARRIED OUT by the Federal Office of Road Safety in Australia concluded that the long-term deterrent effect of random breath testing depends on maintaining a high level of continual, visible police enforcement. Indeed, it's been accepted that target rates for testing are the best way to improve results. In 1989, the Australian prime minister announced plans to ensure that at least one in four drivers was tested every year.
If the evidence from Australia is anything to go by, random testing may go the way of the early days of penalty points here, whereby respect subsides as motorists realise that their chances of being caught remain low. Enforcement is as much about continuous policing efforts as it is about new laws and penalties.
The second element of a concerted strategy is education. A total of 404,607 provisional licence-holders were on the road at the end of last December, according to Department of Transport figures. Some of these are drivers who have failed their driving test at least once, while others may have passed only a theory test.
In other states, road safety is part of the school curriculum. Similarly, in several European countries, there are requirements for evidence that the driver has taken some approved driving lessons - compulsory basic training - before they are allowed on public roads.
There's a vast body of evidence to show the majority of victims of road crashes are in their mid-20s, yet there is no system of probation for newly qualified drivers. Compare our situation to that of Denmark, where new drivers are put on three years' probation, during which time they are more likely to have their driving licences confiscated. Similarly, a stricter penalty point regime operates for those newly qualified drivers.
There is one further element in the road safety equation that should not be ignored: engineering. Cars are much safer these days, with airbags, anti-lock brakes and stability control systems that adjust the power distribution to the wheels to prevent skidding and even apply the brakes if the car seems to be going out of control. While they cannot rescue a car from all eventualities, they do save lives.
In Sweden, where the number of traffic deaths last year dropped to the lowest level recorded, the state agency attributed the fall to improved safety features in cars and to their network of highways. In particular, it highlighted the increasing number of cars equipped with anti-skid systems.
WHILE IRELAND IS no giant in the car industry, the Government can have an influence on cars' safety features by removing them from the punitive tax net it applies to cars in general.
All these elements, and more, can combine to save lives on our roads. What they require, however, is political will. Even in this regard there are examples of how a little political attention can save lives.
In France, President Jacques Chirac made a reduction in road deaths an election pledge in 2002. Since then, traffic-related injuries and deaths in France have fallen by one third. In the first year after he was elected, road deaths were cut by 20 per cent.
Even from a purely financial perspective, greater enforcement, better education and even tax breaks on safety equipment make sense. According to the NRA, the estimated cost of all road crashes recorded, including insurance, medical and other costs, was €1.22 billion in 2004.
This year is crucial for those responsible for road safety. The current strategy runs out at the end of the year, while a general election is in the offing. Is there the political will to make the necessary changes, or is Ari Vatenan's grisly question closer to the truth than we care to admit?