Brendan Hoban: Speedsters must be finally brought to book                      

Western People 19.11.24

At long last a proposal that could actually make a real difference to changing the ever-increasing statistics of road deaths and accidents. At election time politicians search desperately for another approach, another policy idea that could convince an increasingly cynical electorate to part with their precious votes. 

That’s par for the course. But when that idea emerges from a former Taoiseach and possibly the next Taoiseach, it  suggests that its time may have come. 

Enter that old fox, the ultimate survivor Micheál Martin, in search of an idea that could define Fianna Fail’s policies as different from Fine Gael, now that FF and FG are becoming impossible to distinguish, a reflection of their obvious gradual absorption into one successful political brand. 

Even though for years FF hopefuls have been lining themselves up as alternative leaders to Martin who was presumed to be on the run in to retirement, he has successfully seen them all off one by one – to Europe (Michael McGrath & Barry Cowen) and elsewhere (Jim O’Callaghan and others).

The recent big idea from Martin is so refreshingly novel that it could well be a winner – a dedicated transport police service.

Even though Martin has aimed it primarily at sorting out a huge problem on public transport – the fear generated on the Luas (for example) by anti-social behaviour and a lack of security. But it refers more widely to one of the most serious and intractable problems in Irish life – deaths on the road multiplying it would seem year by year as well as the hundreds of traffic accidents that are life-changing in their implications for accumulatively thousands of people in recent years. 

Here’s a question: What percentage of road deaths and life-changing accidents can be attributed to a small cohort of dangerous drivers? 

Who are the drivers whose behaviour  on the roads is responsible for most serious accidents? Not women, because statistically women are the most careful of drivers. Not the vast majority of men. The culprits are a small minority of young men and older irresponsible drivers who are happy (it would seem) to ignore the gospel truth about road deaths – SPEED KILLS! 

Death on the roads and its often unmentioned corollary, serious injury, have many sources: bad roads, a failure to implement laws, ineffective penalties, deficient cars, boy racers, inadequate and sometimes very elderly drivers, etc, and not least, genuine accidents. All deserve attention from law-makers and law-enforcers.

But there is one group who deserve special attention and this is where Martin’s big idea comes in. A small cohort of drivers continue to cause havoc on our roads and a dedicated, independent transport police service is just what is needed to suss them out.

Just as we dedicate additional personnel and resources to particular problems that are deemed serious enough to warrant exceptional attention – domestic violence, drug trafficking, bad housing, social exclusion, racism, inequality, child abuse, immigration, mental illness, etc – we need a dedicated police force to tackle speedsters who are running riot on our roads. 

Who are they? Most of us know more than a few. And those who may be unknown can soon be fingered when a dedicated police service starts looking for them. Among them are those bullying drivers who feel compelled to overtake anyone who happens to be in front of them and when a responsible driver who drives within the specified legal limits is deemed an obstruction to their obsession they ‘tail-gate’ them, flash their headlights at them, beep their horns and generally make a dangerous nuisance of themselves. The message is simple: get out of my way. 

Who are they? They are the drivers who recklessly attempt to pressurise responsible drivers at, say, an intersection to take a chance they don’t want to take. They are the ‘tail-gaters’ driving all kinds of vehicles up to and including articulated trucks but united in their belief that nothing matters on the road except their freedom to dictate the speed at which they travel. 

Such drivers are not just a nuisance and a pest but a danger to themselves and to others. They have no respect for speed limits or for other road-users so they have to be taken off the roads as a life or death matter of urgency. They need to be hunted down and removed from the public roads. 

That approach may be deemed too excessive, even melodramatic, but it may be what is needed. Because everything that has been tried to date has either failed or lost its impact: pleas to slow down, graphic reconstructions of accidents where children are killed, the debilitating effect of alcohol consumption; every possible example invoked to make any and every motorist stop and think about the lethal weapon they employ when they turn the key of their car. All of that and more and all by common consent ineffective.

If murderers have to be found because life is precious and we deem it important to allocate sufficient resources to ensure that they are caught, is it not time that we approached the problem of road deaths and accidents with the same level of seriousness? 

The same applies to those wreaking havoc on the roads. Two responses to the ongoing carnage on our roads and its appalling implications for so many are needed: (i) a dedicated police service to find those who overwhelmingly constitute the main danger to road safety and (ii) laws that establish a punishment that will get recalcitrant speed-abusers to stop and think rather than the present slap-on-the-wrist (and grossly ineffectual) fines that are making no impact as deterrents. 

Well done, Micheál Martin, it’s an idea whose time  has come.

Association of Catholic Priests