Why is everybody blaming young drivers for all the ills that are on our roads?
I know that it’s younger men that are involved in the most serious and fatal crashes but I do not agree that they should take all the blame.
As has been said by others about all the solutions, like engineering out problems etc, the reality is that the standard of driving on our roads by all age groups is atrocious and in my experience it is older drivers that display a lack of a real sense of competent driving skills.
During the 2 hours of this mornings Pat Kenny show I observed over 40 acts of stupidity on the road (ranging from driving too slow, to waiting too long to move off from traffic lights and then going through when the lights have gone to amber, to driving in two lanes, and a few other things like reading, phoning talking to children, no seat belts on children, no car seats for children, and I’ll bet that none of those I observed was under forty. So in my opinion it’s all drivers of all ages and genders that do not have competent driving skills. That is for various reasons like developing bad habits, like lack of concentration, a poor driving test, drivers who were given licences without a driving test, and many more reasons too numerous to go into here. The one thing most observers are agreed on is that we need a new driving test and in my opinion that’s for everybody not just the young.
The one thing that holy hypocritical Ireland seems to believe is that it’s only the young that are drinking and driving, well in my opinion it’s older people that are drinking and driving. The media seems to think that all these responsible mature people are leaving their cars at home when they go to the pub, well they are not. Every pub car park is full at night and in the early hours they are empty. Somebody is driving these cars away and I do not believe that they are driven by designated drivers. To a certain extent that’s to be expected in rural Ireland as there is almost a non existent public transport service. That’s not a justification for it just an acceptance of reality of living in rural Ireland. In urban areas however there is no justification at all for drink driving as public transport is everywhere.
Enforcement, that’s all I can hear. Well here is about enforcement, If your going to drink ten pints and get into a car, it’s most likely you don’t care about penalty points. You will when you lose your licence but not until then.
Enforcement I hear everybody shouting about but when the cameras are on the roads that they are on, then they say why are they on these roads, when they should be on those roads, well here is news for you all, if you ask for enforcement then don’t cry when you get it. I agree that the cameras are not in the right places to stop the carnage, but the reality is that they never will, or could, be there on a 24 hour basis. I believe the Priest was right in saying that the community should play its part on policing the roads, but that should mean getting all the engineering solutions and all the other things addressed.
Enforcing the rules as they stand is the Governments way to enhance the statistics that allows them to shout about how successful they were in catching 500 drunk drivers since mandatory breath testing came in. In my experience when the Gardai are getting a hard time from the public on Joe Duffy, Pat Kenny, Matt Cooper et al and also when they get a hard time in the Tribunals, out they come, to shoot fish in a barrel on dual carriageways, road blocks that create traffic jams, and paying a great attention to what they normally ignore on the roads, and in general making their presence felt to the general public and letting us know that they are there and they will enforce he rules when they want to. This may not be true, but it’s our perceptions and perceptions are reality for those that have them. This does not buy anybody any credibility and certainly the perception that road safety is used as a revenue gathering exercise creates mistrust and indifference to the efforts of those charged with responsibility for our roads. Gay Byrne must be a year in charge and what’s happened, a big fat nothing. He said he would resign, well I’d like to hear his views now, because I think his resignation might well be coming up sooner that we think.
Prevention is something that never comes up in this whole topic. All the Garda efforts are about detection and increasing statistics that create sound bytes for the media. Why can’t the Gardai go into the pubs at closing times, tell the people that they are outside so don’t drive the cars, and in future leave them at home. They don’t need to catch anybody drink driving but this would be a much better way to prevent them from driving while drunk. It’s also quite hard for people like me who drove for years with drink taken when it was legal to do it, so therefore I would prefer to be prevented than caught. Just for the record I do not drive now with drink taken. The other issue in this is the case of drugs, medicinal and so called recreational. We do not know what’s legal and what is not legal in the case of most medicinal drugs, and in the case of recreational drugs, we know it’s illegal to take them or be in possession of them, but the question is, can you be guilty of a driving offence when you have them in your system and will the breathalyser show up the presence of these drugs, I don’t know the answer to those, but the minister should know, and he should tell the rest of us.
The road safety authority constantly tells us what not to do, they almost never tell us what we should do. Their recent attempts at Television advertising fell flat on its face as most people believed that the advertisements were stupid. Personally I believe the effort was worthwhile but they need another production company, the company they had just did not deliver the message properly. I laud their attempts but alas no score from this viewer.
Meath County Council pleaded guilty today in court in its part in the bus crash. The local authorities all over the country are guilty of setting bad examples and ignoring safety with road works, road markings, speed limits etc. They do not set a very good example to any of us and as such you get to thinking well if they don’t care, then neither do I, and the indifference is back. The co-ordination of traffic lights seems to be beyond their grasp. There are places in all our cities where it would be quicker to walk on your hands than it is to use a motor vehicle. On Dublin city councils own radio programme the presenter sounds almost frustrated giving out traffic information, because he constantly says, the whole place is a mess, go back to work for two hours, take another route and add 20 extra miles on to your journey. Somehow he forgets that the people in the room with him are managing and controlling the traffic lights that helps create these traffic jams. Last Saturday afternoon my wife was at a wedding on St Stephens Green. The bride was due at 2.30pm, allowing for tradition she should have arrived at 2.45 ish. She did not arrive until 4pm because her car was stuck in traffic. They did not get to the hotel in Castleknock until after 6.30 and that’s on a Saturday afternoon. There was terrible traffic jams around the city centre at this time and to date I have not been able to find out why. The gardai were out diverting traffic from Dame street and O’Connell street, but I still don’t know why.
Rudy Juliano when he took office in New York said the streets were so bad that it looked like nobody cared about them, and he was right, so he set about putting his department through the hoops so that they would show New Yorkers that the authorities cared and as such the people responded very positively, the change in New York has been phenomenal. The local authorities here should take a leaf out of his book and put their own house in order and set a much higher standard for roads. Maybe that will help to concentrate people minds.
There are many anomalies in driving safety enforcement. One very obvious one is the fact that government drivers do not get penalty points when they are in official state vehicles. Seat belts have to be provided on private buses but not on the states own buses. Lorry drivers carrying goods have time restrictions for driving eight hours per day with a number of enforced rest periods. The states bus and coach drivers do not have any restrictions on them, and they are carrying people, while the Lorries are carrying goods, there is something wrong with that.
The message is, it’s okay for a driver to get tired while carrying people, but you have to stay alert and bright eyed and bushy tailed when you’re carrying goods. It sounds so ridiculous but it’s true.
Did you know that fully fledged drunk driving does not carry any penalty points? The current mandatory system give you the option to take your punishment on the spot and as such you are off the road immediately, but if you are over a certain amount then you can still drive until the court case comes up as it is a mandatory court appearance. Of course you most likely will lose your licence bit for how long depends on the legal team etc.
That’s only some of the anomalies but in reality all these do is create cynicism in the minds of drivers and ultimately indifference to driving on our roads.
That’s something for the Minister to think about, but then again I suspect he has much more pressing needs for his attention, like getting re-elected next year. Between the road carnage and penalty points fiasco, and the computers and the other scandalous waste of money by this man, I suspect Mr Cullen will not be re-entering Dail Eireann in the second half of 2007.
