A new television advertisement designed to convince young men of the fatal risks of fast driving was screened for the first time last night. The 30-second commercial, commissioned by the National Safety Council, shows a high-speed collision in which three people are killed but the driver survives, paralysed, to rue his recklessness. It will be screened intensively over the coming month and at intervals over the next three years. The campaign is the NSC's response to the shocking rate of road deaths among young men, who account for up to 30 per cent of the drivers killed each year on Irish roads. Mr Eddie Shaw, chairman of the NSC, remarked that "bravado, peer pressure and a sense of invincibility often leads young men to take risks while driving, without realising the danger of these risks."
The NSC must of course be commended for trying to reduce the level of recklessness among young drivers, but it is hard to offer an unqualified welcome to the latest campaign - for two reasons. First, there is a suspicion that publicity designed to shock the viewer is subject to the law of diminishing returns and may even, over time, become counter-productive as what at first seemed shocking becomes mundane, even acceptable. Second, it is difficult to feel confident about the success of any road safety initiative, however praiseworthy, while the Government itself continues to treat this issue with a scandalous lack of urgency.
It is now close to two years since the Taoiseach launched the Government's road safety strategy, "The Road to Safety", amid much public relations fanfare. At that time he described the rate of road deaths as an unacceptable social problem that had to be tackled "immediately and systematically". Yet the Government has still not provided the finance for a new information technology system needed by the Garda to handle evidence from speed cameras, to process the huge increase in on-the-spot fines, and to introduce the long-promised "penalty points" system for driving offences. And there is still no sign of the legislation required for the latter.
Last October the National Safety Council published a report by Dr Peter Bacon which spelt out the monetary cost of road accidents and the monetary benefits of reducing them. The exercise was designed to demonstrate - not least to the Government - that investment in road safety programmes was well worth while, in terms of cold cash as well as human life. By estimating the cost of a death at over £750,000, a serious injury at £150,000, and so on, Dr Bacon argued that the national road safety strategy should save the State £536 million by 2002 - if implemented successfully. Given the lamentable efforts in this area to date, that "if" already looks impossibly big.