I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
The purpose of this Bill is to update penalties for the wide range of offences prescribed by the Road Traffic Acts, 1961 to 1978. These penalties still stand generally at the levels fixed in 1961 and 1968, the main exception consisting in drunken driving penalties which were revised in 1978. Custodial penalties for road traffic offences are immune to the effects of inflation and only very limited changes are being made to these in the present Bill. The fall in money values over the past two decades has, however, seriously eroded the impact of monetary penalties under the Road Traffic Acts and the Bill increases all of these.
It is well that the House should realise the extent of Garda and courts activity generated by the Road Traffic Acts. In 1982, the latest year for which full details are available, nearly 425,000 prosecutions were taken by the Garda for road traffic offences. This represents some 75 per cent of all cases brought by the Garda to the District Courts in 1982. If we add to this figure prosecutions relating to motor taxation and to the Road Transport Acts, which are roads-related but do not come under the Road Traffic Acts, then nearly 92 per cent of prosecutions before the District Courts are involved.
It is imperative that this wide area of law enforcement activity, and the system of on-the-spot charges which parallels it, should not be limited in the sanctions at its disposal to fines which have become trivial in relation to the offences involved. A realistic level of fines must be maintained to provide proper support for the Garda, traffic wardens and the courts in their task of upholding road traffic law, and I am bringing this Bill before the House to do this.
The importance of an improved law enforcement framework was emphasised by the Prices Advisory Committee Report on motor insurance published in December 1982. Arising from that report, the then Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism announced in October 1983 a series of steps decided upon by the Government, including the undertaking that fines for road traffic offences, and particularly uninsured driving, would be substantially increased as a matter of urgency. The present Bill fulfils that undertaking.
Before dealing with the detail of the Bill, I would like to comment briefly on the basic purposes of road traffic administration and of the place of enforcement within this. Road traffic regulation exists primarily to enable roads to be used safely and efficiently and to a lesser extent to minimise the environmental inconvenience caused by vehicles.
The safe use of our roads is self-evidently desirable: road accidents are the sixth highest cause of death for the whole of our population and the single most likely cause of death for all Irish people under the age of 35. The human suffering caused by death and injury on our roads is incalculable. In impersonal actuarial terms, however, road accidents are estimated to cost our community some £200 million per year at present prices.
Fortunately, there is an internationally known correlation between increased motorisation and a reduced rate of fatal and serious injury accidents per vehicle. Ireland has been benefiting from this: although the number of vehicles registered in 1982 was nearly three times the level of the early sixties, the number of fatal road accidents in that year was actually lower than any year since 1969. The rate of fatalities per 10,000 registered vehicles is now less than six compared with just over ten in 1961. There is no room however for complacency. An Foras Forbartha have estimated that road accident counter-measures, including enforcement, still have the potential to reduce the rate of accidents considerably and we must continue to work to this end.
The other fundamental purpose of traffic management is to rationalise the use of our roads and, especially in urban areas, to maximise their capacity. The physical mobility of Irish society depends almost entirely on our road system which carries some 94 per cent of all inland traffic. The vehicle population has trebled from the early sixties to its present level of around 900,000 and is forecast to further double by the year 2000. Effective traffic control methods are more than ever needed, then, to cope with increasing traffic and to get the best use both out of new and existing roads.
Traffic management is not a negative enterprise. It involves planning, engineering and educational inputs as well as those of regulation and enforcement. The programme of major and normal road improvements now in progress is enhancing both the mobility and the safety of the Irish road network. Traffic law enforcement, which the present Bill has been drawn up to support, is itself mainly positive in intent: its primary objective is to promote voluntary observance of the rules of the road. The Bill is concerned almost exclusively with increasing the maximum monetary penalties applying to offences under the Road Traffic Acts.
The only other matters dealt with consist in a number of new custodial penalties for heavy goods vehicle offences specified in sections 3 and 4 of the Bill and in an extension from six months to one year specified in section 3 of the period of mandatory disqualification from driving for a second or subsequent motor insurance offence within any period of three years. While disqualification is not a penalty in the strictest sense, the opportunity has been taken to include this particular provision. As regards increased maximum fines, with which the Bill is mainly concerned, it will be more convenient to summarise these broadly for the House than to follow the rather complex detail of sections 2 to 5 which is fully described in the Appendix to the Explanatory Memorandum which I have circulated.
The increased monetary penalties proposed in the Bill fall into three categories. The first involves the most serious road traffic offences, namely, those connected with dangerous, drunk and uninsured driving, and the maximum fine applying on summary conviction to all of these is being increased to £1,000. This is currently about the heaviest fine which can be imposed within the jurisdiction of the District Courts.
Responsible motorists, who form the considerable majority of the driving population, will not complain at these increases. Recent figures show that some 46 per cent of drivers killed in road accidents in Ireland had a high blood alcohol level compared to a corresponding 20 per cent of drivers in Britain. Claims made to the Motor Insurers' Bureau in 1982 as a result of accidents caused by uninsured drivers amounted to over £13 million. The reckless and anti-social pattern of behaviour indicated by these figures is unfortunately quite prevalent in our society. In 1982, the Garda had to take over 9,000 prosecutions against drunk driving and over 62,000 prosecutions in relation to insurance offences. The maximum fine for the latter, having stood at £100 since 1961, has long been outstripped by the cost of annual motor insurance cover and its increase to £1,000 is fully justified.
The maximum fine for dangerous driving not resulting in death or serious bodily injury is also being increased to £1,000. Where these do result, the offence must be tried on indictment and the maximum fine is being increased to £3,000 with the present five-year maximum term of imprisonment remaining unchanged. I should explain to the House at this point that the present Road Traffic (Amendment) Bill, 1983, which is otherwise comprehensive in its revision of penalties, does not deal with sections 112 or 113 of the Road Traffic Act, 1961. These are concerned respectively with taking a vehicle without authority and unauthorised interference with the mechanism of a vehicle.
The reason for not dealing with these provisions in the present Bill is twofold: penalties under section 112 of the Road Traffic Act, 1961, are already being increased by section 12 of the Criminal Justice Bill, 1983, now before the Dáil and, following on this, the Minister for Justice intends to move Committee Stage amendments to that Bill which will transfer sections 112 and 113 of the Road Traffic Act, 1961, from the road traffic to the criminal justice code.
The second broad category of maximum fine which the Bill is increasing relates to moderately serious offences under the Road Traffic Acts. In general, these have been punishable up to now by fines not exceeding £50; the Bill increases this maximum to £350. Careless driving, dangerous parking, driving a defective vehicle and most offences relating to the testing, certification and loading of heavy goods vehicles come within this second category.
The heavier fines which apply to heavy goods compared with other vehicle users are justified. As representatives of the road haulage industry will acknowledge, they reflect the need for firm sanctions where breaches of the law may offer considerable commercial or financial advantage. Permissible weights and dimensions of heavy goods vehicles have recently been increased in this country subject to additional controls over axle spacings and loadings. While these increases are justified economically on grounds of the more efficient transport which they should promote, I am concerned that infrastructural costs should not be added to arbitrarily by failure to observe the regulations designed for heavy goods vehicles. I intend, in consultation with other appropriate authorities, to see that they are enforced.
The third category of increase contained in the Bill is set out in section 2. This revises the amount of the maximum fine arising under the "general penalty" for road traffic offences from £20 to £150, in the case of a first offence, and from £50 to £350 for certain second and subsequent offences. The so-called "general penalty" is laid down in section 102 of the Road Traffic Act, 1961, for all offences under the Road Traffic Acts and Regulations to which no other specific penalty applies. Among the many offences covered by it are excess speeding, non-wearing of seat belts and most traffic and parking violations. The District Courts encounter varying degrees of culpability in dealing with these offences. The new maximum fine of £150 will give them much greater discretion than the present £20 limit to relate penalties to the seriousness of the circumstances involved.
While the road traffic offences belonging to this category may be trivial in the legal sense, they are far from this in their impact on general road safety. An Foras Forbartha's Road Accident Facts, 1982, comments adversely on the high proportion of trucks exceeding speed limits, especially on the approach routes to towns, and suggests that better observance of these limits would prevent many accidents.
An Foras have estimated moreover that as many as 50 lives could be saved annually by universal wearing of seat belts, yet the rate of wearing here is no more than one in two, compared with 19 out of 20 in the UK, where mandatory wearing was introduced only in January 1983. Four out of five car drivers and front seat passengers killed in Ireland in 1982 were not wearing seat belts at the time of the crash. Finally, proper observance of parking regulations would bring obvious benefits to the flow of buses and other traffic in our large urban areas.
The Prices Advisory Committee Report on Motor Insurance, to which I referred earlier, recommended that minimum penalties should be applied more extensively to offences under the Road Traffic Acts. This recommendation has not been followed in the present Bill because of the difficulties which it would involve in regard to the courts' constitutional prerogative of administering justice. Road traffic offences, as I have already explained, comprise some 75 per cent of all cases dealt with by the District Courts and present a wide variety of different circumstances. Applying minimum penalties across a wide range of these offences would usurp unduly the courts' role in evaluating the degree of culpability involved in each case. So-called fines-on-the-spot, incidentally, are not legally fines but a fixed payment in lieu of prosecution which a person may opt for in the case of certain alleged offences. The amount of these payments is determined in regulations made by the Minister for the Environment and is not appropriate to the present Bill. When the Bill becomes law I propose to review the fines-on-the-spot system.
The exclusive concern of the Bill is with revising penalties. I am well aware of the case for other desirable amendments to the Road Traffic Acts some of which arise directly from undertakings given by the Government in October 1983 on the Motor Insurance Report. I intend, therefore, to bring another Road Traffic Bill before the Oireachtas in the present year, but am seeking the speedy passage of this one for the reasons which I have been outlining.
I commend the Bill to the House.