Switching the focus

Switching the focus

Heart of the Matter

Edwin McGreal

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THE National Rifle Association (NRA) of the USA have as a slogan: ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’. It aims to switch the focus from guns being the cause of gun-related crime to assessing the people behind the guns and what it is in modern-day American society that leads people to kill.

A similar situation exists in Ireland today in relation to road deaths. While the broad assumption is that modified/sports cars are responsible for the majority of road fatalities, is this really a fudging of the issue? Noel Gibbons, the Road Safety Officer for Mayo County Council, certainly thinks so.

“I think we have to move away from looking at the car as being the problem and assuming that it is the car that creates the speed. What we should be focusing on is looking at the profile of the driver. If we look at people between the ages of 17 and 24 we can see that they feature highly in road accidents,” argues Gibbons.

He also makes the point that, while modified cars or sports cars are capable of reaching high speeds in a short space of time, virtually all cars on the road are capable of dangerous speeds.

“Cars are definitely not the problem, most cars can do up and beyond 100mph anyway, it depends on the driver, their level of responsibility. There has been talk too about putting a [speed] limiter on cars, but that’s not clear-cut. If someone is attempting an overtaking manoeuvre and cannot pick up speed it can often be dangerous too. Besides, limiters are very easy to circumvent,” added Gibbons.

This points to a clear need to focus attention on the behavioural patterns among drivers if progress is to be made. In conjunction with An Garda Síochána, the Mayo Road Safety Officer has set up a number of road safety awareness programmes. Garda Kevin O’Connor is Mayo’s Young Driver  Liason Officer and he feels that a combination of Garda presence and education is helping to improve the situation.

“We cannot be everywhere all of the time so it is important that self-policing becomes prevalent. We set up checkpoints, with the aim of monitoring road traffic, not to catch anyone out. When we stop someone at a checkpoint the hope is that it might prevent them in the future from driving recklessly.

“We’ve a schools programme up and running for the last 12 months, where myself and Noel address 16-18 year-olds, and it does seem to be hitting the mark. We try to show people what to do rather than tell them what to do,” adds Garda O’Connor.

However, attempting to get across to the general public how vulnerable we all are on the road isn’t always easy. Garda O’Connor has had the misfortune of attending some accident scenes where that vulnerability was all too apparent.

“It’s probably unavoidable for a garda on duty to be at the scene of a fatal accident. If only we could transport the classroom to the scene of a fatal accident, only then might the shocking reality sink in of how fragile the human body and car actually are. Only when you see this yourself do you realise how vulnerable the human body is. No matter what safety devices your car might have, if you hit something at speed, the chance of survival is slim,” warns O’Connor.

O’Connor and Noel Gibbons are working together on some schemes which they hope will both educate and benefit young drivers. Measures ranging from reducing the cost of insurance for safe, younger drivers to creating a greater awareness of the perils on the road right through to providing an outlet for speed in a controlled environment, are being finalised at present.

“One thing we are doing is setting up a register of young drivers, taking details of their car, phone number, address etc. We plan meetings with them and there will be a 12-month wait and if they have a clean record after that we hope to set up a link with an insurance company whereby the driver will get a reduced rate,” explains O’Connor.

“We want to separate young drivers from boy racers so that all young drivers are not tarred with the same brush. Hopefully we might be able to reverse the trend. We’ve spoken to young drivers already and their enthusiasm has made us keen for the project,” he continued.

Noel Gibbons has also set up schemes for the coming weeks which he hopes will heighten awareness.

“We’re planning to have a one-day show where different companies come along and show and sell different equipment for cars like alloy wheels etc and we can use a setting like this as a forum for getting across to people what issues are important.

”We will also be working at the next Mayo Stages Rally to try and get the message across to a lot of the young drivers attending that might be influenced by what they see that the rally drivers are highly skilled, operating in a controlled environment and in cars that are modified for safety reasons,” concluded Gibbons.

A work in progress, certainly, but progress all the same.