I regret that, owing to a miscalculation, I did not hear the Minister's speech but I had the advantage of seeing it since. We had this matter discussed twice in the last Seanad—in 1955 and 1956. It is not a political matter. We are all at one in desiring that the roads should be made safer and that the law should be improved, if that will be of any advantage. We differ merely on matters of detail and occasionally on matters of principle, such as the imposition of fines on the spot.
My first reaction to this measure, like my first reaction to every other measure like it, is that there is no use in enacting an enormous amount of legislation about traffic when the rules we already have are not enforced. I know that the Minister in his speech this afternoon said he has an assurance that this legislation will be enforced. It is a very large Bill with 127 sections. They make a considerable addition to the law as we have it but if it cannot be enforced, then it is no use because law that is not enforced is bad for the morale of the public.
Your last case is worse than the first if you multiply the provisions of the law and at the same time, make no provision for adequate enforcement. One of the difficulties of the whole question of traffic is that you never know under which thimble the pea is. We have the Minister for Local Government, the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Industry and Commerce. One is never quite sure who is responsible for what.
In Dublin, the position is that when police are in charge of traffic, they are wholly admirable. However, the police not concerned with traffic appear to be, of set purpose, neutral about traffic, as the old D.M.P. were about Irish Volunteers. As far as I see in Dublin, if Gárdaí are not on traffic duty as pointsmen, when they are wholly admirable, they do not bother about traffic at all. There may be reasons for that but I do not know what they are.
There are two things which can be done about this matter. One is education and the dissemination of information and the other is punishment. Education is by no means as simple as people think. There is certainly a hard core of road users, motorists, cyclists and pedestrians, whom nobody can educate and therefore they must be punished. The punishment is punishment of a minority but I think there is no doubt that it should be drastic and if possible, swift.
The whole process of reporting somebody for a breach of a traffic law and having to wait until the case comes up in court—and they have to go there and give evidence; a Guard has to attend, they must spend a day in the district court—seems too slow a method. Here is a matter of principle. Our legal friends tell us: "You must have trial; you cannot have summary punishment" and so on. It is a desperate situation. Every couple of days, three people are killed on the roads. Unless we have some swift, drastic measures for an intractable minority, we shall not get any further in our desire to improve the position.
Another point in regard to punishment and reporting is that we hardly ever see a case of a prosecution in court unless an accident has taken place. Anybody who uses the roads here as a pedestrian or a motorist knows that people constantly disobey the rules. It seems to me, and always has seemed to me, that the punishment should be either a jail sentence or loss of licence. When you say that motorists should lose their licences, you are confronted with the problem of what you are to do with cyclists without lights. The cyclists without lights are not the exception but the rule, certainly in the city of Dublin. Driving home from here to Rathmines or Rathfarnham, or driving north, the great majority of cyclists one meets have no lights. I do not know what we can do about them. What you would like to do is to take away the bicycles. Of course, they are not licensed and you cannot do anything about them at all.
As far as the regulations are concerned, they should be clear, they should be uniform and they should be enforced. I do not know what steps the Minister proposes to take. There is a booklet in which it is set out that you should give way to traffic on your right but nobody does. I do not know whether the Minister, in consultation with the Minister for Justice, can take any steps to see that is done. A short distance from my house, I meet Kimmage Road on my left with traffic coming from it. The buses are much bigger than my car and I yield to them. Once in a while, you will meet a bus driver who gives way but in the majority of cases, particularly private motorists, they come from your left at a fast speed. People coming up and desiring to go on to a minor road want to pass out in front of you, going on your right. I do not know if the Minister has any method by which he can see that these rules are enforced. I do not mind whether the rule is to give way to traffic on your left or on your right but whichever it is, it should be enforced.
Similarly, is there any way of discovering what is a major road and what is a minor road? Is it really possible at law to say what is a major or a minor road and have people on major roads any particular rights? Apparently that is a matter of grave doubtat present. With regard to pedestrians, they have no rights at all unless they are lively, nimble and young, and I am not lively, nimble or young. I am very familiar with two places where there are traffic lights, at Terenure where I live, and the junction of Leeson Street and Earlsfort Terrace. I used to find it easy to cross at Earlsfort Terrace but in recent years it is difficult to cross there. If pedestrians coming up by St. Vincent's Hospital want to cross to Earlsfort Terrace, they proceed to cross when the lights are green but the motorists, in the main, are coming up past the hospital, proceeding towards Leeson Street and they charge the pedestrians right away. I do not know what happens then. If you are nimble you run but I am not nimble and I find it more and more difficult to cross the road. I presume people of a certain age still have their rights. If the motorists did not go around that way, I do not think they could get around.
There are certain things in the Bill with regard to enforcement and there is the driving test. Speaking for myself, I would never have passed a driving test which required me to know what an engine was. I have been driving for quite a long time and I never had an accident but if I had been examined in regard to the details of an engine, I would not have passed the test. The type of test that is required is one in regard to road courtesy rather than knowledge of engines. The most reckless drivers on the road are those who are experts on engines and they take all kinds of risks because they have all kinds of knowledge. The test I should like to see is in regard to how a person behaves on the road.
The arrangements about speed limits are admirable and allow the Minister to impose speed limits and to vary them in the light of experience. The speed limit in the Bill is 30 miles an hour. I live on the Templeogue Road which is a main road to Wicklow and Wexford and also to the south because you can get to Naas from that road. When you have a new car and have to travel at 30 miles an hour, you are in everybody's way. It seems to me that 30 miles an hour, while it is desirable, is a speed limit which it will nearly impossible to enforce. I think I am right in saying that the Minister has power to vary it and make it more realistic.
I wonder if there is any way of defining pedestrian's rights. I take it the Minister is not responsible but it is no harm to remark that from Rathfarnham, through Terenure and down to the quays by Harold's Cross, there is only one pedestrian crossing, which is at the school at the Hospice. It is a very wide road and there is no way of getting across. In a great many cases when people are crossing, the traffic lights change. I do not know what the position is in law or whether the pedestrian has rights. He may have but if he insists on them, he will probably get killed and that is no use to him.
One other matter I should like to see dealt with is in the use of horns. I think there is a provision in the 1933 Act that motorists can be prosecuted for creating a nuisance through the use of horns. I should like to see an endeavour being made to have a silence period say from 11 p.m. to 8 a.m. I know that on all main roads there are a great many motorists who drive on the horn and do that even in winter evenings when it is dark, at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock and 12 midnight. On the road on which I live, people sound their horns to get other people out of the way, but everybody knows that at night time the proper use of one's headlights is sufficient for this purpose. In many cities, in Rome and Paris, for instance, the introduction of silence zones has been very successful and they should be tried in Dublin. Some people suffer inconvenience because they have to live on corners which perhaps were once quiet places but which are now subject to all kinds of noises.
There are aspects of this matter which are not certain. I saw, for example, that there was a discussion about people travelling in different lanes through traffic lights. What does that mean? If I am turning left at traffic lights, I approach them as near as possible to my left and if I am not going left, I leave room for cars beside me but people come up on your left and shoot out in front of you. I do not assert my rights any longer. Professional drivers can assert their rights but I never try. In Dublin, it is quite common for people to approach on your left and then go ahead in front of you.
I wonder is that the law? I am sure the Minister would know. I do not know what the law is. I do feel that this whole question of driving and death on the roads cannot be dealt with merely by passing laws. When we pass this law, we will be only at the beginning. I think improving the roads is not such a wonderful thing. Quite lately, I saw a very bad accident on a very wide road.
I think it was the late P.S. O'Hegarty, an inveterate cyclist, who said that the proper thing was not to make better roads but to put traps or gullies on them. If these gullies were approached at speed, the drivers would break their wheels, if not their necks. There is something in that. If Senators lived, as I do, on a road on which there is heavy traffic, on which people travel at enormous speeds, they would feel that a big notice in Templeogue: "Beware of the Gullies" or "Mind Your Wheels" might be of some use. It would not be of much use, but it might be of some use. It could not be done, of course, because it would cause trouble to other people, but there is no doubt whatever that the problem of speeding on the roads will have to be dealt with.
It is not a problem of a social nature. It is not rich people who speed; it is not the people with enormous cars who speed. My experience is that small cars, in particular, seem to be driven at very high speeds. It is not the motorists who are the most neglectful. Women with prams and children approaching to cross a road at a pedestrian crossing find crowds of cyclists there and a great many motorists and bus drivers shove their vehicles right across pedestrian crossings in the presence of policemen who do not seem to take any notice. It is no wonder that pedestrians do not bother about pedestrian crossings because when they go to cross, they find them already occupied by cyclists, motor cyclists or motor vehicles. If we could have the enforcement of some clear and uniform law even in a simpler Bill, it would do a lot of good.
I welcome the idea of driving tests. I am not quite convinced—I think the Minister gave way on this matter in the other House—on the question of summary punishment, but I am prepared to hear it argued. If there was clarity and enforcement even in a simpler code than this, we would have made considerable progress. The Bill should certainly get a Second Reading.