What would you do to improve driving and road safety in Ireland?

Alun

sicruise wrote:

Constructive comment, thank you.

It was meant in all seriousness, believe me.

ballooba

scitpo wrote:

And you are never going to get zero deaths or injuries unless you ban cars and then we might as well go back to living in caves.

My point was, unlike other countries, there are no statistics available for injuries only deaths. Sometimes injury is as bad as or worse than death.

scitpo wrote:

You can actually put a value on a persons life you know.

:eek:
I wouldn't like to be in your family.

BTW, if one were to follow your sick logic (shudder) then a person may be worth more dead than alive.

scitpo

I jsut cant stand this crap of putting the life of a human on an untouchable pedestal. If a life is worth everthing then by your logic we should ban cars. But life has to go on and people will die when you have 2 million people hurtling around at 60mph in steel boxes every day. We just have to live with that fact.

sicruise

scitpo wrote:

I jsut cant stand this crap of putting the life of a human on an untouchable pedestal. If a life is worth everthing then by your logic we should ban cars. But life has to go on and people will die when you have 2 million people hurtling around at 60mph in steel boxes every day. We just have to live with that fact.

So what is your point, do nothing about it? You should think before posting comments like what you have posted, this thread was started to comment on improving road safety due to the fact that people are loosing loved ones every day... have a bit of compassion and a sense of humanity.

scitpo

sicruise wrote:

So what is your point, do nothing about it? You should think before posting comments like what you have posted, this thread was started to comment on improving road safety due to the fact that people are loosing loved ones every day... have a bit of compassion and a sense of humanity.

1 person a day dies on average on our roads in Ireland. Thats a great number considering all the journeys that people undertake. As the trend is for falling roads deaths then we should just continue on as we are. Keep buying the best new cars you can and keep on improving our road infrastructure.

ballooba

scitpo wrote:

I jsut cant stand this crap of putting the life of a human on an untouchable pedestal. If a life is worth everthing then by your logic we should ban cars. But life has to go on and people will die when you have 2 million people hurtling around at 60mph in steel boxes every day. We just have to live with that fact.

Of course we are going to endeavour to increase the average life expectancy of our people. Nobody wants to die, be it in a RTA or otherwise. Thankfully people in our society do put a high value on a life. Otherwise why not go work in Iraq or Sierra Leone.

Gatster

Originally Posted by MrPudding
Here is my idea.

Try enforcing the laws we already have.

What he said.

Ah, Mr. P, you have chosen wisely...especially in the context of the comments you made regarding RIRI's suggestions.

Darragh29

First thing I'd do is take the logic that dictates that you have to have your car NCT'd every 3 years and apply this to driver testing.

Think about this, the most common cause of accidents in terms the cause of an accident being either vehicle malfunction or else driver error, is very obviously driver error. You have to have your car NCT'd every 3 years but the chances of your vehicle actually being the cause of an accident I imagine is very small as compared to the chances of the driver of the vehicle causing an accident. However we have to get the low risk car NCT'd every 3 years and the driver of the car only has to get NCT'd once in his/her life!?!

I'd change this for a start with a driver test every 3-5 years for all drivers.

Secondly, I'd enforce the drink driving legislation to such as degree that you wouldn't see a single car in a pub carpark in the evening. It's a joke that you still see pub car parks packed with cars on a Sunday and in the evenings, there is no way all these drivers are inside drinking 7UP or non alcoholic drinks, not from what I'm seeing anyway in my local.

That's my two cents worth.

Dish

FIrst:

Review Speed Limits in Areas!
Driver Education comes apart of the school ciricualam
I would review the Provisional License (but not get rid of it)

Darragh29

scitpo wrote:

And you are never going to get zero deaths or injuries unless you ban cars and then we might as well go back to living in caves.

Very true, but this is what you have to aim for. 30 deaths a year is obviously better than 300. 30 deaths on the road is not ideal, but it's a hell of a lot better than 300. Sometimes when you hear on the radio or TV that "that's 17 less road deaths than this time last year", I often wonder could I have been one of the 17 that didn't die on the road this year but could have if 17 people who had been drinking or speeding just decided not to do so on one particular night that I was out, because there are 17 people out there who should probably have been killed but were not. Weird thought I know...

MrPudding

Darragh29 wrote:

First thing I'd do is take the logic that dictates that you have to have your car NCT'd every 3 years and apply this to driver testing.

Though I would hate to have to do it, I agree 100% with this. It just makes sense. Obviously not possible at the moment, they can't even test people once let aone every few years.

Alun

MrPudding wrote:

Though I would hate to have to do it, I agree 100% with this. It just makes sense. Obviously not possible at the moment, they can't even test people once let alone every few years.

I don't know any country in the EU or elsewhere that does it either. Probably because it would test the testing system of any country to breaking point, I'd imagine.

Darragh29

MrPudding wrote:

Though I would hate to have to do it, I agree 100% with this. It just makes sense. Obviously not possible at the moment, they can't even test people once let aone every few years.

Well if we can test a car every 3 years we should be able to test a driver at least every 5. Don't want to go off topic, but it highlight's an obviously huge difference in efficiency between the NCTS and the Dept of Environment.

To me it is just madness that cars are tested regularly and people are not, and it's the prople who are causing the accidents.

scitpo

Or because it would be a pointless piece of intrusive bureaucracy which would have minimal impact. If you look at the types of road deaths that occur then you will see that its just the drivers fault and no training or education will change a man who wants to rally around the back roads at 5am on a saturday. They know the danger and they chose to accept the risk.

ballooba

scitpo wrote:

Or because it would be a pointless piece of intrusive bureaucracy which would have minimal impact. If you look at the types of road deaths that occur then you will see that its just the drivers fault and no training or education will change a man who wants to rally around the back roads at 5am on a saturday. They know the danger and they chose to accept the risk.

That is simply not true. All this talk of drink driving and speeding makes people think that they are the main causes of accidents. Far from it, they are just the esaiest to make a big fuss about. You never see ads abou checking your bulbs or staying in your lane or irresponsible parking. Poor education and lack of respect causes a hell of a lot more deaths than excessive speed* or drink driving.

*speeding is a stupid term in the first place. what is speeding? having speed? i.e. moving?

Darragh29

scitpo wrote:

Or because it would be a pointless piece of intrusive bureaucracy which would have minimal impact. If you look at the types of road deaths that occur then you will see that its just the drivers fault and no training or education will change a man who wants to rally around the back roads at 5am on a saturday. They know the danger and they chose to accept the risk.

If this is true we must all still apes swinging out of trees and living off acorns and horse chestnuts. Not every person who kills someone on the road is:

(1) A man

(2) Driving on a back road

(3) Driving at 5AM on a Saturday morning

I accept there is a hard core that will not learn until they lose their licence and even at that, I know one individual who that happened to and he is still driving around the place. Most people are capable of improvement and more importantly are capable of accepting the need for improvement.

scitpo

Darragh29 wrote:

If this is true we must all still apes swinging out of trees and living off acorns and horse chestnuts. Not every person who kills someone on the road is:

(1) A man

(2) Driving on a back road

(3) Driving at 5AM on a Saturday morning

I accept there is a hard core that will not learn until they lose their licence and even at that, I know one individual who that happened to and he is still driving around the place. Most people are capable of improvement and more importantly are capable of accepting the need for improvement.

A huge amount are though. Lots of press releases about the stats for this sort of thing.

ian_m

Improve driver test waiting times and make tests manditory every 5 years.

ballooba

scitpo wrote:

A huge amount are though. Lots of press releases about the stats for this sort of thing.

No they are not. Only about a third of fatal RTAs are cause by inappropriate speed, of which excessive speed is a subset.

scitpo

Who said anything about speed? Its at night and its on back roads. Thats where the deaths are happening.

ballooba

From Road Collision Facts 2005

Table 36 Two Vehicle Collisions: Contributory Action, where Specified
(Driver Action) (Fatal) (Injury) (Total) (%)
(Drove through Stop/Yield Sign) (10) (316) (326) (16.2)
(Exceeded Safe Speed) (20) (240) (260) (12.9)
(Went to Wrong Side of Road) (40) (494) (534) (26.5)
(Improper Overtaking) (4) (112) (116) (5.8)
(Drove Through Traffic Signal) (0) (58) (58) (2.9)
(Failed to Signal) (0) (33) (33) (1.6)
(Other Action) (16) (670) (686) (34.1)
TOTAL 90 1,923 2,013 100

http://www.rsa.ie/publication/publication/upload/2005%20Road%20Collision%20Facts.pdf?PHPSESSID=60476507cb1708c609a39b4534f8a2a5

Mr. Presentable

Show drivers where the f***ing indicators are.

ballooba

scitpo wrote:

Who said anything about speed? Its at night and its on back roads. Thats where the deaths are happening.

Only 25% of fatal RTAs happen at night. You specifically mentioned speed (unless rallying around means playing tennis?). Most of our roads are rural roads. Go figure.

Rovi

scitpo wrote:

Or because it would be a pointless piece of intrusive bureaucracy which would have minimal impact. <snip>

I've been banging on for years that mandatory regular re-testing of all drivers would be a 'good thing' for a variety of reasons, among them would be the discipline of actually having to get up to speed with the current ROTR/legislation and possibly even taking a lesson or two in preparation (:eek:).
If nothing else, motorists would get a refresher course in 'best practice' and would have to implement it for at least the duration of the test.
Who knows, they may even continue driving in such a manner afterwards.

While this probably wouldn't have much impact on the hard core hooligans, I think it would have a dramatic effect on many of the 'annoyances' we all come across all the time: proper use of indicators, roundabout technique, tailgating, lane discipline, use of mirrors, parking, etc, etc, ad infinitum.
I'm convinced that many of the people performing the above incorrectly (in my opinion) aren't doing it out of vindictiveness or spite, they simply don't know any better or think they are doing it right.


A side benefit would be that the testers would get to go for a spin in some nice cars instead of an endless parade of feckin' Micras and Polos.

the_syco

Retest everybody. Properly.

Esp those f**kers who got a no-test-license a few decades ago.

Then do a retest every 20 years. We have a hard enough time trying to test the people who need the test atm, so 5 years is just stupid.

ballooba

the_syco wrote:

Then do a retest every 20 years. We have a hard enough time trying to test the people who need the test atm, so 5 years is just stupid.

While I'm not entirely convinced about the whole retesting thing, mainly because I'm so glad to have got it, charging people proper rates for the test brings in revenue so there is no reason it could not be done properly. The main problems is the unions of course. Also people would then say it is just another source of revenue for the governemnt.

walshs3

nipplenuts wrote:

Show drivers where the f***ing indicators are.

agree totally eith this.Also it should be made compulsary to put on your dims in wet weather.I do have my dims(not fogs) on constantly,hail rain or shine.Was driving home yesterday in the pi**es of rain and the amount of people i met withe none on,the point of putting them on is to increase other cars awareness of your approach.The biggest offenders seem to be company vans and taxis fro what ive seen so far.

TwoShedsJackson

Zascar wrote:

This could be taken one step further and a phone line should be set up so you can report bad drivers. Very quickly the really bad ones would get lots of complaints and they should be forced to get up to a certain standard or get off the roads.

Well that already exsists anyway, the Traffic Watch hotline or whatever it's called. Reported some gob****e who undertook me in the hard shoulder of the M50 last week as I went to take the slip road off it. Said I'd be willing to make a statement etc etc and haven't heard anything since, nor do I expect to, but hopefully if the cops get enough calls about this guy (assuming he does such things regularly, which I would have to suspect as pulling a manoeuvre like that just wouldn't occur to most people) they may have a chat with him.

jrar

MrPudding wrote:

One of my favourite examples of this is driving in bus lanes. People do not break the law assuming they will be caught. They will weigh up the pros and cons and come to a decisions. What is the punishment if I get caught? What are the chances of me getting caught? What do I gain by breaking the law? At the moment the punishment is kind of irrelevant as the chance of getting caught is so slim. So to use the bus lane example, there are a few threads on here about driving in bus lanes. A number of posters say they do it on a regular basic and even if they get caught occasionally they don’t mind as they think the time they save is worth the €60 fine. And lets face it, €60 is not a lot to pay a couple of times a year when you consider how much time you would save. MrArrogant Driver, whose time is much more valuable than everyone else’s will pay this gladly, buslane on the way to work and buslane on the way home….bargain. Now, lets imagine that every single time you illegally used a bus lane you received a €60 fine. Now MrArrogant Driver is paying €120 per day for the privilege. Do you think he will stop? The punishment is the same, not very much, but the advantage is gone because you will get caught.
MrP

If I'm not mistaken, in some jurisdictions, buses are fitted with a camera so that all non-bus lane traffic can be filmed and the evidence used to prescute drivers - innovative thinking like this would help in this country.

MrPudding

Yes, they have them in some areas in the UK, and I am sure many other countries as well. They also mount the cameras at the front and bac of the buses, these are apparently very effective.

MrP