[Article] Bank Holiday road safety campaign launched

Victor

http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/1021/roads.html

Bank Holiday road safety campaign launched
21 October 2004 09:25

Gardaí have begun a road safety campaign for the Bank Holiday weekend. It came into operation at midnight and will continue until midnight on Monday.

Gardaí are advising motorists that they are focusing particularly on speeding, driving under the influence of drink or drugs, the non-wearing of seat belts and the behaviour of young drivers.

They say that many checkpoints will be set up throughout the country.

Last year, six people were killed and 87 injured on the roads over the October Bank Holiday.

In the first nine months of this year, 295 people were killed compared with 251 in the first nine months of 2003.

mackerski

I'm just back from a little trip to Donegal and back. (I live in Dublin). There was a bit more sign of Garda presence. In Killybegs, at a straight, tempting bit in the town-avoidance road (still a 30 zone) there they were. They checked my licence - the Guard had a big pad of fixed penalty notices in his hand. Getting them seen by motorists was probably the point of the exercise.

Coming back, there was a marked Garda car parked out of sight on a side-road of the wide, straight Cavan bypass. I'd say he did good business. We can all sleep soundly tonight knowing that that stretch of road will be free of reckless 70mph merchants.

You'll have to excuse my cynicism. Possibly misplaced, you might think, since I didn't actually get ticketed and was presumably, therefore, behaving myself (I was). The thing is, I saw so much road muppetry on my travels that these measures could never ever combat. I saw:

* Two separate vehicles hauling unlit, unplated trailers that completely obscured the vehicles' tail lights. On encountering each of them, I was lucky to see them in time. Obviously, in order to see an unlit vehicle in front of you, you need to switch to high beams. Unfortunately the trailers weren't high enough to protect the drivers from the severity of my high beams. Imagine how guilty I felt...

* Large numbers of "Messiah Drivers" (ones who want to attact a following, and therefore drive far more slowly than necessary as far right in lane as possible)

* (partly fuelled, but not excused by, the foregoing). Large numbers of psychic overtakers. Nobody would overtake like that if they couldn't predict what was around that blind bend, would they?

* Extreme tailgating - remember, all this was on wet roads and much of it with reduced visibility due to falling rain.

The holiday weekend isn't over yet, and I haven't had today's news, so I don't know how the accident rate has panned out, but I'm damned if I can see a causal relationship between the kind of Garda enforcement I saw and a reduction in accidents.

As an aside, there's a most unusual bit of signage surrounding a particularly infamous junction just south of Belturbet. On either side of it is one of the usual diamond signs that attempts to depict the junction layout (couldn't make head nor tail of it, would have crashed if I'd looked long enough to try) - on the same plate as that is a _35_ mph speed limit. Huh? Worst of all, that 35 sign is never cancelled in either direction, so if you take it at face value, you'll be either tiddling along until you hit Belturbet or (I think) until the first 60-zone reminder at the start of the upgraded stretch at Butlersbridge.

Dermot

jlang

mackerski wrote:

"Messiah Drivers"

LOL