Irish media and recent road deaths

mike65

Is it merely the reflection of a parochial society or is it more about filling space in the slack summer of news? The coverage seems to be almost obsessive esp when the "angle" is the young age of the dead.

FlutterinBantam

monument

mike65

No-one else find it quite intrusive?

Its when his sort of thing is covered I know I'll never be Irish.

KidKeith89

mike65 wrote: »

No-one else find it quite intrusive?

Its when his sort of thing is covered I know I'll never be Irish.

What do you mean?

mike65

I never knew I was being so obscure!

The Irish (well Catholic countries) seem to have this cult of the dead thing going on - death notices read out on local radio, TDs turning up unasked, the media over high profile cases like a rash esp if its road related, funeral corteges winding their way along N routes regardless of traffic pressure. I wonder what would happen if one of the families said "you know we're doing this privately". One trusts the wishes would be respected but the unspoken pressure to do the "community thing" seems huge.

KidKeith89

mike65 wrote: »

I never knew I was being so obscure!

The Irish (well Catholic countries) seem to have this cult of the dead thing going on - death notices read out on local radio, TDs turning up unasked, the media over high profile cases like a rash esp if its road related, funeral corteges winding their way along N routes regardless of traffic pressure. I wonder what would happen if one of the families said "you know we're doing this privately". One trusts the wishes would be respected but the unspoken pressure to do the "community thing" seems huge.

Well I would think that deaths on Irish roads is something that should be covered meticulously. I don't mean in the tabloidean sense; they can juice it up all they want, I still won't read them. But RTE and the country's decent newspapers should definitely be reporting on this. You can't deny that we have a very serious problem in Ireland with mainly young (idiotic) lads speeding down country roads. People should be made aware of this serious national problem with news coverage, RSA campaigns and those gruesome - but effective, as studies have shown - road crash ads.

All those gob****es that pelt it down country roads at 80 or 90mph put themselves and others' lives at risk. We need to raise awareness of this very serious problem.

mike65

All the cameras in the world pointed at funerals won't change young men (usually) from thinking they are unkillable behind the wheel.

A Dub in Glasgo

You're from Britain Mike? I find over here (in Britain) it is the other way round.. most road deaths hardly get a mention in the media and it is usually rail incidents that get plastered all over the media.

beans

I wonder if the incessant coverage actually does have any positive effect on drivers' behaviours... I'm sick of hearing about every single fatality, to be honest. Another this afternoon from Mayo. I really question it's effectiveness - could it even be a case of incident-overload? As in, the more you hear about it, the more jaded we all become, but with no similar decline in road deaths or improvement in driver behaviour?

I don't believe the public good is being served by all this attention, is what I'm trying to say.

mike65

Road deaths have dropped dramatically over the last 5 years but if you relied on the media to find that out you'd never know so obssessed is it with carnage.

On road/rail - in Britian rail is hughly important so crashes have to be given the media treatment, after all a train crash tends to kill many and the cause could be something that applies to much of the infratructure, here trains are an expensive non-entity.

Robert McGrath

Ireland does provide a disproportionate amount of media coverage to deaths on the road. Any other region of 4 million people (say, a decently sized city in the US) would never think of reporting every single road death on the radio and TV. Fair play to the RSA - they happen to have been an extremely successful lobby group to have achieved this.

On the huge drop in road deaths over the last 5 or 6 years - I wonder how much of this is down to the motorways that have opened in that period?