Sir, - When I went into work on a recent Monday morning, one of my colleagues had lost a sister in a car accident, another had a brother very badly injured, a woman in the village I live in had a brother killed in the same accident, and when my son came home from school he reported that one of his classmate' uncles had been killed in another part of the country. What a dreadful weekend of death and injuries on the roads!
When I leave for work in the mornings I fear for my own safety and that of other family members travelling to college and school.
We are far too complacent as a nation about the yearly death toll, yet everyone in Ireland has been touched directly or indirectly. Can we really not do anything about it?
Personally I do not believe that you can depend on the good will of individuals to drive carefully. I believe that, as your Editorial of April 17th suggested, we should have a proper traffic police force to properly enforce the laws on speeding, dangerous driving and drink-driving. At present there is no visible presence of the Garda patrolling the roads properly. I travel a lot every week and I hardly ever see Garda patrol on the roads. Is this to do with lack of resources or lack of motivation and morale? Can somebody answer this question?
The awful fact of 500 lives lost every year on this island make it a matter of the utmost urgency that our elected representatives put political will behind the effort to reduce this number drastically. Otherwise the prospect in another 12 months of 500 further lives lost and hundreds more heartbroken families is a certainty. We all just hope we won't be part of those statistics. - Yours, etc.,
Cynthia Carroll, Portryan, Newport, Co Tipperary.