Driving us crazy

by Mike

95% of deaths in road crashes happen on “normal roads”, according to the European Road Assessment.

Can you call any of the roads where the traffic is back up as far as the eye can see “normal”? All roads are dangerous, especially the ones that are monitored the least.

I think there’s education needed about driving across the board and I say that as a person who doesn’t drive. I say it as a person who walks to work every day and sees crazy overtaken around roundabouts and bends and younger people putting the foot down when there is a stretch of road no more then 100m in length free.

This need for speed thing combined with drink driving and being under the influence of many other things combined with a person’s ability to believe that driving one handed while talking on the phone will always be a problem, no matter what way you slice it.

You can have Gay Byrne come out and be the fatherly, or should that be grandfatherly, figure head that everyone recognises and he can tell us all off for how terrible we are and can be as drivers, but will we listen? What do you think?

If the horrific yet brilliant ads on television that show the harsh reality of driving too fast on the roads that should wake people up, but it won’t. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few people that shouted “Cool” after seeing one of those ads.

So what to do? Well attitudes have to change. The Gardai and government have to stop using the speed cameras as a way simply to make money. It’s the impression they give off by putting them in the most unlikely of places.

The Government needs to tackle this properly. Give people a real option with public transport and less will want to drive out a night out to the pub. Give publicans the means to make sure that they find out who is driving so they can offer them soft drinks for free so as they can drive home safely, instead of the possibility of them stumbling out of the pub for a “short” journey home. Publicans will complain that they will be poor, but to be honest could you believe that a publican, who charges over €5 euro for a pint of beer and nearly €6 for a pint of coke, could be anything but poor?

There needs to be some cop on across the board. I can’t see it happening, because the “flash motor” will always win out, as will stubbornness.

Is a bit of common sense too much to ask?

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 and is filed under Thoughts & Questions, Views on News.