I am afraid we have nothing to do with road conditions. They are the responsibility of either the NRA in the case of motorways and major roads, or the responsibility of individual local authorities in the case of secondary, tertiary and small roads. I completely agree with Deputy Bannon with regard to the condition of the roads and the danger with regard to subsidence, potholes and dangerous bends. That said, I constantly see a contradiction in the television coverage of an awful fatality when we are told the people in the car who were killed had lived in the area all their lives and know the area, and that everybody knows it is a dangerous road where ten people had been killed in the previous five years. Therefore, one would think that at two or three o'clock in the morning a local who knows the road would know to slacken off, but apparently so often this does not happen. A crash occurs and the person is killed or he or she kills someone else. This seems to be a contradiction.
We are speaking about the state of the roads and this is not the business of the Road Safety Authority. We have very little input if anything. We can only do what committee members and everybody else does, which is that we write to local authorities and complain bitterly about it. It is over to them and sometimes they pay attention and sometimes they do not because there is no basic legal requirement for them to pay any attention to the Road Safety Authority.
This comes back to enforcement. We cannot enforce the law; only the Garda Síochána can do this and if its numbers are cut because of a lack of funds then the bad behaviour starts again. With regard to public transport, I completely agree with Deputy Bannon's remarks that there should be better public transport, but again this is not our business and we cannot get into it. With regard to pubs and people's socialising activities being reduced, the Road Safety Authority awarded one of its leading lights awards for initiatives to a chap on Achill Island who is a publican - oddly enough a lifelong non-drinker himself as are his entire family and no wonder they are successful publicans - who decided to overcome this problem by buying a small bus. It is now known as the pub bus and if one wants to visit the pub one calls him. He collects people from anywhere on Achill Island and takes them to the pub where they can drink their heart out after which he will bring them home at no charge. One may snigger and laugh at this but it is an initiative and as far as he is concerned it is well worth his while to do so. This is one way of attacking the lack of public transport.
Deputy Luke ‘Ming' Flanagan is quite right that "Top Gear" is one of the most fantastically, amazingly and astoundingly successful television franchises ever. It runs a close second to "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" and is shown worldwide. Whether one likes it or not it is an expertly, superbly and magnificently well done programme. It captures the imagination of people throughout the world particularly in our jurisdiction and in the UK and it costs a huge amount of money.
The basic theory about the programme is speed and who can complete the circuit fastest and who has the edge of 1.52 seconds, 1.43 seconds or 1.32 seconds. It is all about speed. It is dressed up as concern for cars and design but what it is about is speed. We have this magnificently admirable programme, which is hugely attractive to so many people, up against the Road Safety Authority's meagre tiny advertising budget, and unfortunately we represent dullness because all road safety advertising has to do with constraints, slowing down, taking it easy and being careful as opposed to the adventurous romantic picture conjured up by "Top Gear". This is a real problem. Can we do anything about it? No, because I am not so old that I do not remember how it was when I was a young fellow and wanted to get my hands on cars and drive them. This is what we are up against and there is not very much one can do about it.
We in the Road Safety Authority go out of our way not to scapegoat young people. One of the many problems with road safety is that everybody has a solution and it is usually one of those magnificently simple solutions which does not work. The grey-haired old loons like me blame the young fellows; the young fellows blame the old fellows; the men blame the women; the women blame the men; and everybody blames everybody else. Everybody thinks he or she is an expert driver and that everyone else is terrible, and this is how they go through life. It is very difficult to get across to people that they are not very good. The most vulnerable people and the worst drivers are young men. It is quintessentially a young man's problem concerning those aged between 17 and 25. No matter that we go out of our way not to victimise them or scapegoat them, nonetheless statistics from throughout the world prove it is the same problem. It is not a young woman problem but a young man problem.
Young men aged between 17 and 25 are the most dangerous people on the road. This is because young people have four delusions when they get behind the wheel of a car and, if I may be personal, the Chairman has probably experienced this with his sons. We and our sister organisations throughout the world have tested this and the four delusions are: "I am immortal", "I am invincible", "Bad things happen to other people and not to me" and "When it comes to driving a car I am every bit as good as the guys on Top Gear and Schumacher, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton or, if actually put to the trial, I am probably a bit better". Nothing one says will eradicate these delusions as they are simply convinced of these things. While this is amusing and funny because we are all delusional to some degree, the problem is the combination of total lack of experience with a huge over-estimation of one's ability. I underline the fact that this is a young man problem and not a young woman problem.
At the same time, many young men love their cars and spend a great deal of money on them. They save up to get their cars and if they had their way they would not let a drop of rain fall on them and they treat them with huge respect. Therefore, one must not lump in all young men together. Some young fellows are just prey to being young fellows; it is a disease in itself.
The issue of oval racing tracks has arisen repeatedly, and according to our sister organisations what happens is that young people love a day out in a place such as Mondello where they race their cars and have a terrific time. Unfortunately, the effect it generally has is the opposite to that which is desired, which is that if the person in charge of Mondello tells someone he is a terrific young fellow, a great young driver, fantastic and better than all the others it confirms in him that he is a terrific driver and unfortunately it does not stop at the gate of Mondello. Now that he has been told by the experts that he is a terrific driver he takes advantage of this and drives madly. So often, this has been the experience.
I go along with the Deputy's thinking that there must be something in taking young people to such a place to let them go mad and drive the way they want to. The problem is that with the first fatality the idea will bite the dust because parents will put a stop to it immediately. I like the idea very much that if in the ordinary way of driving on the open road he or she incurs six penalty points he or she will not be allowed on the track. This might work but so far the evidence seems to be against it as it merely reinforces the young person's idea that he is a fantastic driver and as good as anybody on "Top Gear". There are breathalysers on the market which are advertised left, right and centre. They are all over the place. The problem is that the breathalysers used by the Garda Síochána are desperately finicky yokes. They have to be recalibrated regularly by Professor Denis Cusack in Trinity College so that they will stand up in court. It is a great idea to have one's own breathalyser so that one can blow into it and feel one is in the clear, but is it accurate?
I should not really say this, but it seems to me that one would need to drink an awful lot to be still over the limit at 10 o'clock the next morning. The general rule of thumb is that any unit of drink in a reasonably healthy body is processed in an hour at the most. Therefore, one would really need to have been at it the night before in order to be still over the limit. Do not quote me, however, when one is stopped by the cops on that because I cannot stand over it. There is more argument about how much drink one can have because we have tried out the experiment again and again. I have done it several times on the Late Late Show, as have Mr. Pat Kenny, Mr. Ryan Tubridy and Ms Marian Finucane. We have brought a selection of people of both genders and various ages out for dinner, wine and a drink afterwards, before breathalysing them. There is no pattern to it. It depends on one's age and weight, whether one is fat or skinny, tall or dumpy, a couch potato, young or old, as well as attitudes, mood and all of those things. There is no pattern whatsoever, so it is a totally pointless exercise to say "I can have three or four pints and it doesn't have any effect on me". Most people caught at the checkpoints are middle-aged Irish men who are over the limit. They are all Irish men who have regularly been drinking and driving, and see no reason - because of Gay Byrne, the Road Safety Authority or anybody else says so - they should stop drinking and driving. They are men who are utterly convinced that they can drink seven pints and it has no effect on them. They go through life telling their friends, "If I drink eight it begins to have an effect and if I have nine I really am over the top. But I can have seven and it doesn't affect me". They are then stopped at the checkpoint and cannot believe that they are over the limit. They are the most surprised people in the world. There is therefore no pattern or index concerning drink driving. The dull, boring and constraining message that we keep on repeating is: "If you're going to drink, don't drive; and if you're going to drive, don't drink". Forget about 20s, 50s or 80s, because it does not work. That is the only safe thing to do, although it is a dull message.
Texting while driving is absolutely appalling. The awful thing about it is the difficulty of enforcement because a cop has to eye a person doing it, and he must be either on a motorbike or in a car. It is extremely rare that a cop walking on the beat will approach a driver if he or she sees a person using a mobile phone. They think: "That's the traffic corps' job. I'm just a policeman on the beat and I've nothing to do with that." It tends to irritate me. The difficulty is in spotting people in the act. One can be lucky or unlucky, it is purely random. I quite agree with the Deputy that it is absolutely appalling. UK records show that people have been caught repeatedly and have been involved in appalling smashes, including fatalities, because they are texting as they drive. It is just awful.
I completely agree about the dangers of unsecured timber. A relative of mine was killed, while stationary at the traffic lights on Clontarf Road, by a pile of timber coming off a truck because the rope straps were not secure. The certificate of professional competence, or CPC, encapsulates that in so far as it includes all aspects of road safety for professional drivers. Every single thing appertaining to one's professional driving career is included in the tuition for the CPC. Therefore we are telling people in the position described by the Deputy, to ensure their load is tied down and absolutely safe. It should be checked and re-checked because all sorts of things can happen out on the road. By enforcing the CPC, and as more and more professional drivers take it and pass it, we hope to cover such aspects of driving. As the committee will appreciate, it is purely negligence and a lack of training, tuition and thought which leads to the situation as has been described. The Deputy is quite right that it is just awful.
We did a check in Hollywood with our sister organisation on articulated trucks. As an ex-articulated truck driver, even Deputy Stanley's hair would stand on end if he knew what we found. There was one case - and we have colour pictures of it - where a break-line from the tractor to the trailer was held together with two universal clips. This was a remarkably good solution to a temporary problem. Somewhere the pipe had gone, so they were joined together by two universal clips. Except that when we discovered it, clearly the two universal clips - and this is a truck that travelled right through the roads of Ireland, the UK and Europe - had probably been in place for three years and were rusted so badly that they were about to go at any point. The guy driving the truck was not the one who did the two clips. The guy who did the two clips had emigrated to Canada or Australia, but the driver knew nothing about this. That is just one example of the things we discovered whereby people are taking risks in huge trucks. That is why one has accidents like the recent one on the M25 near Taunton. Deputy Stanley is obviously speaking from experience when he recounts those details, but that is the sort of thing we encountered - extraordinary things wrong with trucks that are using our roads every day of the week. It comes down to Garda checkpoints and enforcement.
I completely agree with the points made about indicators. In our day, we were trained to check the side-mirror to see if it was clear to pull out. One then indicated, having confirmed that it was clear to pull. One then pulled out and, if necessary, one indicated to go back in. Now, it is just a case of pulling out anyway and it seems to me that taxi drivers are the worst offenders. It has caught on because, I believe, we have so many non-nationals driving cars in our country. They are driving according to their standards, not according to ours. That is why this thing is creeping in. It does not seem to matter to them; they pull out and indicate so that they can claim they indicated, and the devil take the hindmost. I agree with the Deputy and I deplore it. It is a question of enforcement again.
