399 road deaths in 2005 leave us the worst in Europe

boardy · 02-01-2006 10:07AM #1

"IRELAND is the only major developed economy in Europe where motoring casualties are on the rise." - From the Irish Independent today.

One word will fix this problem:

Enforcement.

Hobbes · 02-01-2006 11:11AM

They need to enforce a lot of things though.

- L plates.
- Tax + Insurance (which they do somewhat).

I would also go as far as to boost up the premiums on current drivers until they sit and pass the exam again and have it expire every 3 years. They already lower your premiums for taking the advanced driving test.

Ireland just has a lot of piss poor drivers. Not sure about deaths but there are accidents nearly daily on the M50.

mike65 · 02-01-2006 11:31AM

We are not the worst in Europe, go to Portugal for that! We are bad no question but this subject has been beaten to death many times over.

We all know the solutions, the government knows the solutions but cant be arsed to do what needs doing cos 400 people are'nt getting killed in a single crash. One here, two there is apparently okay by them (and us, after all we're the idiots actually driving).

Mike.

boardy · 02-01-2006 11:48AM

mike65 wrote:

....but this subject has been beaten to death many times over.

Mike.

I understand Mike, but now it's official ..... we are horrible drivers.
From my experience driving in foreign countries, it was second nature for native drivers to drive lawfully, otherwise they would get a ticket in the mail or stopped by the traffic corps and issued a substantial penalty.

Driving in Melbourne recently, the backseat drivers were continuously telling me to drive within the stated speed limits or the car's owner would get a ticket. Even my insistence that I was only going a couple kilometers above the limit wasn't a sufficient argument.

Most of the time when driving from Cork to Limerick, I seldom see any presence of a Guard on the road. And if there is a Guard, between the flashing of the flights to warn us and the knowledge that we can speed with impunity after the speed check is laughable.

Regarding the enforcement of L-plates, tax and insurance:
maybe it would help, but what we need is an inherent 'fear' of breaking traffic laws.

mike65 · 02-01-2006 11:58AM

I just realised this topic should be in commuting/transport really.

Mike.

boardy · 02-01-2006 12:07PM

Wasn't quite sure where it should have been posted.

I figured since it dealt with death and carnage, and changing our perceptions ...... Humanities would be a good spot for it.

But feel free to move though.

Sleepy · 03-01-2006 10:31AM

It might help if we sped up the process of modernising our road network. I assume this is why the government is so happy to hand our public infrastructure to the toll-road companies in the middle of a boom economy. Or am I giving them too much credit?

Gilgamesh · 03-01-2006 10:41AM

kind of agree with sleepy.
imho I think a big factor is the quality of our roads in comparison to germany for example.
the patchworking they do here is an absolute joke.
travel up the N2 on a regular basis, you always see workers filling craters (not potholes anymore) with tar, and then bang, two days later that crater is back.
I think they should invest a larger amount of Dosh into the modernisation of the streets.
but hey, it's more important to have pretty buildings than safe roads

boardy · 03-01-2006 10:51AM

Put one relative of each of the 399 victims into an open area and focus the camera on the face of one person. Then zoom out from a height to see the enormity of the devastation.

Then pan to another open area to see another 400 people, waiting to be victims for the coming year.

Graphic ads on TV doesn’t appear to be working, so maybe this one might.
Improving the infrastructure would indeed help, but I still believe that enforcement is the key.

CJhaughey · 03-01-2006 10:52AM

What the problem consists of is a surfeit of cars and people that have no clue on the rules of the road, couple this with a substandard road network and inadequate enforcement and you end up with the current situation.
I don't see any evidence of pretty buildings here either.

Dades · 03-01-2006 11:00AM

Any stats available within that 399 figure? As in how many can be attributed to drink, speed, tiredness etc. or just plain stupidity?

And how many of us are willing to have speed limitors or ignition-connected breathalysers put in our cars? That would surly prevent most deaths.

BigCon · 03-01-2006 11:02AM

Is it only me or do a large percentage (at a guess 50%) of these deaths occur at the weekends, in the early hours of the morning?

It would be interesting to see exactly what percentage of these crashes that drink played a part.

Definatly agree that enforcement is necessary. You take any village or town in Ireland at midnight on any given Saturday night - the streets are full of cars, the driver of the majority of these are in the pubs drinking (I can't prove this, but know it from personal experience).
The guards need to target a random town/village each weekend and test each and every driver for alcohol between say 11pm and 3am.
This would see a huge decrease in drink driving and hopefully a reduction in the road deaths.

I also think that driving safety/skills sohuld be added to the school curriculum, a lot of poor driving is plain ignorance where the drivers just don't know any better...

Join us next week for the rant on the poor road design and how it's also responsible for many of the deaths.:)

Dman_15 · 03-01-2006 11:06AM

The Atheist wrote:

Any stats available within that 399 figure? As in how many can be attributed to drink, speed, tiredness etc. or just plain stupidity?

And how many of us are willing to have speed limitors or ignition-connected breathalysers put in our cars? That would surly prevent most deaths.

You dont even need figures.
You can bet the majority were saturday and sunday mornings between 12 midnight and 6am. Mostly males ages 18-25. Therein lies the problem

Gilgamesh · 03-01-2006 11:12AM

get rid of the L plates and send people to decent driving schools as a requirement

kirving · 03-01-2006 11:20AM

boardy wrote:

.... but what we need is an inherent 'fear' of breaking traffic laws.

Thats exactly what we need, huge fines for speeding (government subsidised speed limitors would be nice too), really drunk drivers should have their picture displayed on tv ads along with famailies of people killed by drunken drives.:eek:

Dades · 03-01-2006 11:45AM

Kevin Irving wrote:

Thats exactly what we need, huge fines for speeding (government subsidised speed limitors would be nice too), really drunk drivers should have their picture displayed on tv ads along with famailies of people killed by drunken drives.:eek:

Problem is people already know the potentially terrible consequences of drink driving. No-one can ignore the recent spate of ads or general media coverage. But false confidence causes people to ignore their conscience.

I think fear of being caught is a more realistic fear. And the only way to do this is to start catching enough serial offenders that people are no longer so sure they can get away with it.

Sleepy · 03-01-2006 11:49AM

I don't think Ads will ever make a significant change to our driving behaviour, boardy.

We need to tackle this problem from a number of angles:

1. Ensuring people have adequate driving skills before allowing them on the road. A secondary school driving course consisting of an hour a week in 5th year and Leaving Cert, provided by properly licensed driving instructors (unlike our currently unregulated driving instruction industry) could easily be timetabled (take an hour from the less useful subjects timetables, maybe Irish or Religious Instruction) and would certainly have a quickly noticeable impact on the road-death statistics of young men with provisional licences. Obviously, this would be expensive to provide for every student in the secondary school education system so perhaps it could be funded (at least in part) by the insurance industry who would obviously stand to gain from reduced numbers of car crashes (remember, the 399 deaths only represent a small number of all crashes for 2005).

This should be coupled with a thorough overhaul of the driving test itself. By the very fact it tests one's ability to reverse around a corner (which is of limited use in the real world) but not one's ability to parallel park (a daily task for most modern drivers) it can be clearly seen to be out of touch with reality.

2. Ensuring that people have safe roads to drive on. Given our booming economy and the ready availability of cheap, efficient labour from Eastern Europe our Government has no excuse for not investing heavily in our transport infrastructure. And, while the issue of Toll Roads is a whole other debate, I don't think this is the answer.

3. Finally enforcement, and I put this last for a reason. Only when people know how to drive properly and have safe roads to drive on, is it fair to come down hard on those who drive unsafely. Obviously, offences like drink-driving can be clamped down upon immediately and personally, I love BigCon's idea of a random town or village being thoroughly checked every weekend (though some level of monitoring would need to be kept up in other towns across the country too).

So, there you go: a simple 3 step plan to reducing our road-deaths.

Doubt there's a politician in the country sensible enough to implement it though...

jimbling · 03-01-2006 11:55AM

The Atheist wrote:

Any stats available within that 399 figure? As in how many can be attributed to drink, speed, tiredness etc. or just plain stupidity?

There was an article a few weeks back in the Sunday Independent (i think - I did save it so ill check later). It was all about the rise in road deaths etc. But there was - for the first time I can ever recall seeing - some stats associated with it.

These were not in-depth stats, but just what area was the cause of the crash (ie more so than times and ages etc that Dman is talking about)

What most caught my eye was what the absolutely overriding majority of crashes were caused by.
NOT drink driving
NOT speeding

At the top of the list - at approx. 45% was cars - for whatever reason - been on the wrong side of the road. It was talking about peoples just lack of observation - of falling asleep - of passing out when you shouldn’t etc etc.
Just below that was other driver errors - I think at 30 something.

Speeding was at about 12% and Drink Driving was around there somewhere as well.

YET almost every add and discussion we see or hear is about either speeding or drink driving (note there has been one or two general observation adds - although again it is likely to be of the "one pint decreases your observation" type). The need to build a campaign about actual driving. People dont seem to understand that it is dangerous - WITHOUT SPEEDING OR DRINKING - never mind with.

Im in cars with people all the time - and am amazed how they get through the day without crashing. just complete lack of awareness of whats going on around them. (It was when I started to drive a motorbike I realised how serious this actually is)

The Atheist wrote:

And how many of us are willing to have speed limitors or ignition-connected breathalysers put in our cars? That would surly prevent most deaths.

This, i think is a completely different argument. You kinda have to get into personal freedom etc... very tricky argument. The oppressive state / big brother atmosphere in the world today is already enough, without having these sort of stringent rules and regulations coming into place.

And as well as that, I would hope you can see, from my point above that this would only stop a small minority of the deaths on the road - --- you dont need to be drunk and speeding to kill someone. You need to be either be very unlucky (ie get a puncture on the motorway and skid across the road etc) or do something very stupid - this can include speeding irrationally or drink driving.

Dman_15 wrote:

You dont even need figures.
You can bet the majority were saturday and sunday mornings between 12 midnight and 6am. Mostly males ages 18-25. Therein lies the problem

I'm not so sure about this stat. I know a lot of the young peoples deaths are at night etc, but not sure its the majority.... but I really don't know.

The point I would make about this is - if this is true - then it is less and less likely that the guards can do anything about it. Firstly - there will be far less cops around at this time of night. And it would be impossible to get the manpower to manage it so people actually fear meeting cops at this time. Also you have the problem that most of these crashes are in rural areas on the backroads of our country. This again makes it impossible for cops to manage.

The only solution that i can see, is as said - change the campaign a bit. And START TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO DRIVE. The current system is a shambles - and I am sure you will find that that is the main reason we have so much deaths on the road. Its peoples carefree mindset.

JackieChan · 03-01-2006 02:44PM

I see that today a man in Cork and another in Kerry have died in seperate accidents. Are these the first of 2006?

Dades · 03-01-2006 02:56PM

jimbling wrote:

The only solution that i can see, is as said - change the campaign a bit. And START TEACHING PEOPLE HOW TO DRIVE. The current system is a shambles - and I am sure you will find that that is the main reason we have so much deaths on the road. Its peoples carefree mindset.

Driving, like singing, chess, or golf is something that not everyone can be good at. No matter how much training. Everyone has different levels of spacial ability, concentration, confidence etc. I still think what needs to be tackled are people who flaunt the speed/drink limits.

Sleepy · 03-01-2006 03:10PM

The Atheist wrote:

Driving, like singing, chess, or golf is something that not everyone can be good at. No matter how much training. Everyone has different levels of spacial ability, concentration, confidence etc. I still think what needs to be tackled are people who flaunt the speed/drink limits.

Even if they only account for 20% of the deaths?

Proper instruction in anything will ensure that the student is better at that task than poor instruction. In Ireland at present there is total absence of licensing, legislation or even guidelines for driving instructors. You don't even need a full driving licenece to set up a school of motoring!

If people haven't the ability to pass a *proper* driving test (i.e. nothing like the current one), they haven't the ability to drive and therefore *shouldn't* be driving.

jimbling · 03-01-2006 04:47PM

The Atheist wrote:

Driving, like singing, chess, or golf is something that not everyone can be good at. No matter how much training. Everyone has different levels of spacial ability, concentration, confidence etc. I still think what needs to be tackled are people who flaunt the speed/drink limits.

lol, im not a fool atheist, although perhaps i sound it sometimes

of course not everyone will be the exact same level - Some will still be terrible, some will be excellent - but if you can raise the average it will have done more good than a load of extra cops on the road.

And of course we still need to tackle the speed/drink driving problems. I fully support this. My grandmother was killed by a speeding driver and I have a friend who I fight with every weekend I see him having a few pints and driving. But catching people doing 45 in a 40 zone that should probably be 60 anyway is not going to help this. Or someone doing 80 on a motorway. These are the places they generally catch people, not in the places where the accidents happen - for obvious reasons - (ie night time, and country roads)

But people (and politicians) are using these two problems as the whole problem because its easy to blame them. becuase, in these situations its obvious what the problem is, and there is someone to blame other than themselves (the cops/government).

They try and ignore the fact that it is the stupidity and naivity of people that cause the accidents (speeding and drink are two of the stupidities - but there are others)

NEVER will we be rid of deaths on the roads, its an unavoidable result in the use of cars. People die horse riding, people die skiing, people die jogging, people die, people die, people die. What we are talking about is trying to decrease it.

my overall point in the whole thread was that speeding and drink driving DO NOT make up the majority cause of road deaths.

Even if you completely eradicated drink driving and speeding (which of course is impossible) we would still have had 300 deaths this year, and this thread would still exist.

that is all

mike65 · 03-01-2006 06:12PM

Whats most 'interesting' is the high number of deaths which occure in single vehicle crashes. The crash in Kerry this morning 4 guys in a BMW hit wall and one dies, no other car in involved, the driver is 20 years old.

Mike.

Dman_15 · 03-01-2006 06:20PM

jimbling wrote:

But catching people doing 45 in a 40 zone that should probably be 60 anyway is not going to help this.

A pedestrians chance of survival is twice as good, being hit at 30mph as opposed to 35mph

boardy · 03-01-2006 07:43PM

Sleepy wrote:

I don't think Ads will ever make a significant change to our driving behaviour, boardy.

We need to tackle this problem from a number of angles:

1. Ensuring people have adequate driving skills ....

2. Ensuring that people have safe roads to drive on .......

3. Finally enforcement, ......... personally, I love BigCon's idea of a random town or village being thoroughly checked every weekend (though some level of monitoring would need to be kept up in other towns across the country too).

This looks like a reasonable mandate to me.

Why are the guards not using random breathalyzer tests? I understand that they are considering it. In the States, it is second nature to expect to be breathalyzed while driving.

What annoys me most though is the lack of sufficient prison time for people convicted of drunk driving, which resulted in a death. To me, this is manslaughter at the very least.

JackieChan wrote:

I see that today a man in Cork and another in Kerry have died in seperate accidents. Are these the first of 2006?

Unfortunately, according to the news at 5:30 pm, three people died today from road accidents.

Endurance Man · 03-01-2006 09:22PM

I think the state of the roads in this country play a huge part in all of this. I have never seen roads in such a bad state, it is as though the road builders where trained by monkeys

. Why is it when they fill in a pothole they cant find the energy to try and level out the new tar. Instead they just leave a big bump in the road and move on. I think the pace of road building is also not great, it seems to take months and month to construct 100m of road

.

jimbling · 04-01-2006 09:07AM

Dman_15 wrote:

A pedestrians chance of survival is twice as good, being hit at 30mph as opposed to 35mph

There chance of survival is multiplied to the Nth degree if the person driving is concentrating and avoids hitting them at all.

but this is not what I was talking about - more talking about on some of the jewel carriage ways and some main roads etc.... not villages and school areas. But again i was ONLY making the point that doing what you say will save some lives - fixing the system will save many lives.

Do both if they can - and hopefully will.

jimbling · 04-01-2006 09:17AM

boardy wrote:

Why are the guards not using random breathalyzer tests? I understand that they are considering it. In the States, it is second nature to expect to be breathalyzed while driving.

There is a problem with it - to do so would break the law. Its infringing on someones privacy. There is talks of changing the legislation to suit.

boardy wrote:

To me, this is manslaughter at the very least.

At the very least? you reckon it could be called murder?

also on this note - if someone falls asleep at the wheel and kills someone - is that murder/manslaugher? Or some kid who passes a car out on a bend? what about the old lady who cant see properly and didnt even see the guy on the bycycle.

It def should be punished, but you can not compare it to one guy beating another to death for eyeing up his girlfriend.

(in saying that, I think the violance crimes are getting off way too easy too, so its just the scale really)

boardy · 04-01-2006 09:31AM

jimbling wrote:

At the very least? you reckon it could be called murder?

In some countries, it can be classified as 2nd or 3rd degree murder. If a person gets into a car and drives 5 miles to a pub and then kills someone on the way home while drunk, and they admit that they knew they were drunk getting into the car, then there is a certain level of premeditation involved. Hence, a 2nd/3rd degree murder charge.

Dades · 04-01-2006 10:07AM

Sleepy wrote:

Even if they only account for 20% of the deaths?

The point is I believe they are the only causes that can be realistically tackled.

Where did that 20% spring from BTW? Speed doesn't necessarily mean doing 110mph - it just means fast enough that you can't react. Virtually any situation can be avoided if you go slow enough. I'm dubious that 80% of road deaths had nothing to do with how fast the vehicle was travelling.

Sleepy wrote:

Proper instruction in anything will ensure that the student is better at that task than poor instruction. In Ireland at present there is total absence of licensing, legislation or even guidelines for driving instructors. You don't even need a full driving licenece to set up a school of motoring!

You can raise the bar for the test as high as you like and keep some people off the road - but I don't suspect they are especially the ones that cause road deaths. Retesting everybody every 10 years might solve some problems but this is never going to happen. Will a stricter test slow down the large %'age of young adults who fly around the roads in the middle of the night?

jimbling wrote:

They try and ignore the fact that it is the stupidity and naivity of people that cause the accidents (speeding and drink are two of the stupidities - but there are others)

You can't legislate against stupidity. You can train people how to drive better, but it's not going to prevent them doing stupid things on the road. Once a test is passed people believe they can drive, and will continue to do so whether tired, or distracted by something within or without the car.

boardy wrote:

In some countries, it can be classified as 2nd or 3rd degree murder. If a person gets into a car and drives 5 miles to a pub and then kills someone on the way home while drunk, and they admit that they knew they were drunk getting into the car, then there is a certain level of premeditation involved. Hence, a 2nd/3rd degree murder charge.

At worst, that information is complete rubbish, at best it is bad law on the part of whoever proposed it. There is no premeditation to murder someone unless it is your intent to go out and run someone over.

Sleepy · 04-01-2006 10:39AM

The Atheist wrote:

The point is I believe they are the only causes that can be realistically tackled.

Where did that 20% spring from BTW? Speed doesn't necessarily mean doing 110mph - it just means fast enough that you can't react. Virtually any situation can be avoided if you go slow enough. I'm dubious that 80% of road deaths had nothing to do with how fast the vehicle was travelling.

I was quoteing the twenty-something percent referred to by jimbling. I'm sure that virtually any situation can be avoided if you go slow enough but frankly, suggesting that everyone drives 30mph regardless of the road they're on is just giving in to tunnel vision.

You can raise the bar for the test as high as you like and keep some people off the road - but I don't suspect they are especially the ones that cause road deaths. Retesting everybody every 10 years might solve some problems but this is never going to happen. Will a stricter test slow down the large %'age of young adults who fly around the roads in the middle of the night?

Why won't retesting everyone every 10 years happen? It's one of the most sensible means of ensuring that only qualified people are allowed to drive. A stricter test, coupled with proper enforcement of current laws requiring that provisional drivers must be accompanied by full licence holders would indeed cut down on the number of idiots on the road. I'm sure people would still drive fast on roads where it was safe to do so, but I, for one, don't see any problem with that.

You can't legislate against stupidity. You can train people how to drive better, but it's not going to prevent them doing stupid things on the road. Once a test is passed people believe they can drive, and will continue to do so whether tired, or distracted by something within or without the car.

You can train people properly so that they're aware their driving ability will be impaired if they drive when tired and alert them to the dangers of allowing themselves to be distracted.

BTW, if you can't legislate against stupidity, what exactly is the purpose of speed limits? Only a stupid person will drive faster than the surrounding conditions make it safe to do so. Strangely, however, many of the speed limits posted around the country are significantly below, or even significantly above a safe speed level to drive at on that given stretch of road.

At worst, that information is complete rubbish, at best it is bad law on the part of whoever proposed it. There is no premeditation to murder someone unless it is your intent to go out and run someone over.

That's why it's second or third degree murder, because while not pre-meditated (or first-degree) murder, your decisions and actions have lead to the death of an innocent party. Personally, I'd consider it a far worse crime to kill someone while drink driving than the simple manslaughter of a driving accident caused by the driver being distracted / swerving to avoid an animal/child. Presumably it was on this grounds that the legislation referred to was based.

399 road deaths in 2005 leave us the worst in Europe

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