What date is it today? January 12th, and an entire week has passed without this column mentioning deaths on the road. Lawks a mussy, what is Kevin Myers about?
For we have reason to be so very proud of the recent magnificent achievements on our roads. We should now manage 500 road deaths for 2006, the target set by this column last week - more in hope than in expectation, mind, but my, how swimmingly things have been going since then! First of all, congratulations to all concerned for the upsurge in road deaths over the Christmas period - at 37, a 54 per cent increase over the previous year. This was proof once again that when we put our minds to it, there really is no limit to what we can achieve. But only by hard work will we reach the magic half-thousand by December 31st, 2006.
How did we manage to augment traffic mortality by 54 per cent? Well, most notably, by having virtually no policing whatever. With visible policing, people tend to drive more slowly and not drink and drive. But happily, across the Republic over the crucial five-week holiday period, we managed to abolish policing - visible and invisible - altogether. A heroic effort all round, and we should applaud An Garda Síochána for its role in maximising road deaths.
Now I hate to dent the congratulatory note of this column - for if there's one thing I can't bear it's that typically Irish begrudging note that some commentators strike whenever we do something really well - but there's an area for concern.
Firstly, we note that 1,974 motorists were breath-tested for alcohol over the five weeks. Call that 2,000 - about 400 a week, which works out at 57 a day.
In other words, on average, two motorists a day were breath-tested per county across this fine Republic throughout the period of allegedly high-profile policing of the Christmas holiday. I repeat: on average, just two drivers per day per county were breath-tested for alcohol. Not tested positive - merely tested. Now, in the nature of things, some counties will have tested even more than two a day. This is worrying.
However, in compensation, there must be some perfectly splendid counties where An Garda Síochána breath-tested absolutely no one for alcohol for days - why possibly even weeks! - on end. I wonder: is there a single county where absolutely no one was breath-tested at all over the Christmas period? If that is the case, there must have been absolutely no gardaí on the roads ever, and local motorists clearly felt free to drink-drive and speed and generally behave as people do when sure that the eyes of the law are not upon them.
This heroic negligence was not - as we can see - in vain, because it must have been a major factor in pushing the road deaths up by 54 per cent. Would that our captains of industry could learn by example from such dramatic improvement in productivity! I'm not quite sure how you can transfer the knowledge of how to kill oodles and oodles of people on the roads into the realm of industrial output, but no doubt those bright sparks in the Smurfit Business School or the Irish Management Institute could put together a formula.
What will happen to the senior officers in whose districts absolutely no one was breath-tested at all? At the very least, we might expect promotions for some - but alas, that might not be a realistic proposition for them all. Is there a Nobel Prize for increasing mortality on the roads? If there is, should some of our more enthusiastic guardians of the right to kill or be killed when driving not be nominated? This is such a worthy cause that it would be remiss of the Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner not to ensure some suitable reward comes to these officers who have done their own little bit in increasing the needless harvest of death and misery on our roads.
But though much has been done, there is much more to do. We must not slacken. Happily, the Minister appears to have done nothing whatever about lorries which have blind-zones in front of them, and with increasing frequency have been slowly driving into pedestrians, killing old people and mothers pushing babies. He is to be congratulated for his inertia so far. Furthermore, his advisers are clearly doing a splendid job and deserve every penny they get.
Soon the new metric speed limits will come into effect, and wherever they are perfectly meaningless - as on motorways and major dual-carriageways - we must insist that there are speed traps to catch people safely going 10 kilometres per hour over the legal limit. Similarly, we must be sure that there are no speed cameras at all on those tiny back roads where speed limits are already way above what is safe. The purpose of speed cameras is not to increase safety, but to generate pleasing-looking statistics, and also revenue. All those gardaí not mounting checkpoints over Christmas - they still have to be paid, you know, and the money's got to come from somewhere.
Already, I'm very optimistic about this year's figures. In the first nine days of the year, nearly a human being a day had their lives needlessly cut short on our roads. Such a harvest of heartbreak and misery is really quite admirable. But we must beware of complacency. Let us therefore brace ourselves for our duty, and so bear ourselves that if An Garda Síochána were to last a thousand years, men will point to the present generation and declare: "That was our finest shower."