I move:
That Seanad Éireann invites the Minister for the Environment and Local Government to outline to the House the new initiatives he proposes to take to curb the on-going carnage on the roads; and also to outline the steps he proposes to have taken to effect a substantial reduction in the number of road accidents, fatal and otherwise.
I welcome the Minister of State. This issue has plagued me for a long period. Anyone who cares to search the records of the Dáil will be aware that while I was a Member of that House, Question Time never passed without my tabling a question to the former Minister for the Environment, Deputy Howlin, urging him to take action to curb the level of slaughter and carnage on our roads.
This level and that of other EU member states — I accept we do not have jurisdiction in other countries but we might set them a good example — is unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue. There were 453 fatal road accidents in Ireland in 1996. This represents an increase of 4 per cent on the previous year. In addition to this horrifying catalogue of death, 13,319 people were severely injured or incapacitated for life on our roads during the year in question. The National Roads Authority estimates that the cost of all road accidents in Ireland in 1996 was approximately £455 million. That is a horrendous amount of money which could be used for other purposes.
My main aim this evening is to stress our complacency in respect of this frightful loss of life. In the past five years more people were killed on Irish roads than were killed in Northern Ireland since the beginning of the Troubles in 1968. When one considers the extent, nature and scale of the effort invested in reducing the number of killings in Northern Ireland and promoting peace there and the lack of effort invested in reducing deaths on our roads, there is an apparent incongruity regarding our immunity to the level of road deaths.
During the past ten years, the equivalent of the population of a small Irish town has been wiped out annually on our roads. Behind the statistics, however, are the harrowing human stories of bereavement and loss — children left without parents and parents left without children. I have received telephone calls from many parents who tried to describe the feeling of seeing a young daughter or son, full of life and expectation, going out to attend a social event and later seeing them lying dead in a morgue. That is a horrendous experience for any parent but it happens frequently. It is difficult to understand the grief, pain and anguish unless one has direct personal experience of such tragedies. The sad thing is that each of these deaths is unnecessary and all of them could be averted.
What action is being taken to enable us to prevent these tragedies and avert needless deaths and injuries? In recent weeks the AA stated that road safety standards in this country are a national disgrace. Chief Superintendent John O'Brien, the head of the Garda Traffic Bureau, stated that the largest single factor behind road deaths in Ireland is the mindset of the driver behind the wheel. The NRA underlined this statement when it estimated that four out of every five recorded deaths are directly due to driver behaviour. If we are to effect a significant reduction in the number of road deaths, we must begin by altering the mindset of motorists through driver education. We must seek to radically and fundamentally alter the attitude of drivers. I believe this can be done.
A number of years ago a courageous Minister, in the face of stern opposition from vested interests, introduced what were regarded as severe drink driving laws. There was uproar from many quarters but the Minister in question had the courage to carry on and put in place what are, by any standards, reasonable rules in respect of drink driving. That had a profound effect on people's attitudes, particularly those of the young, to driving. It is seldom if ever that one will find a young person who drinks and drives. The culture of drink driving has been changed for the current generation of young people and I hope the next generation will be influenced by their forebears.
What is required is a change in drivers' attitudes. They respect, and comply with, speed restrictions. If the young drivers whom I praised for their responsibility in respect of drink driving had the same sense of responsibility with regard to speeding, our outlook on this issue might be different. We must seek to re-educate these people and there must be rigorous and comprehensive enforcement of all traffic laws and regulations. It is a proven fact that excessive speed is a major cause of all road accidents and this must be stamped out.
However, it must also be stated that slow moving vehicles can be a major cause of road accidents. Every week I witness the mayhem caused by such vehicles. In a typical and not uncommon scenario, one might see a vehicle pulling a horsebox at the head of a tailback of traffic sometimes a quarter of a mile long. The vehicle in front is driving at 35 miles per hour on a road which has a speed limit of 60 miles per hour. The traffic builds up behind until one driver, who must make up time and is at breaking point, loses his patience, makes an effort to pass out a number of vehicles, misjudges the distance and the proximity on an oncoming vehicle, and causes a major multiple car crash. That is a direct result of a person travelling at a speed which should only be tolerated on the hard shoulder. There has been a law in North America for more than 40 years in relation to slow vehicles as well as one on vehicles travelling at excessive speed. When we consider speed as a factor in causing road accidents, we must also take that into account.
The point I want to stress above all others is the need to publish the equivalent of a White Paper, an education document on driving schools, driving education and how the driving test is administered.
In the past driving schools have been set up in the most haphazard way. A person who has failed his or her driving test can come out of the testing centre and drive his or her car on the open road. We are enormously careless and casual about how we formulate driver education and about the test. Next year all vehicles will be tested for road worthiness and vehicles of a certain age will be tested subsequently every second year, but is it not ironic that we will test drivers only once?
I acknowledge and am grateful for the new initiatives already announced by Minister Molloy. More than anything, I ask him for an increased emphasis on driver education and on altering the attitude of drivers. In particular, I ask that a White Paper on driver education be published to form a discussion document from which we can formulate better procedures and practices.
