Would somebody please explain to me why we’re having to listen to all this kvetching about the need for greater enforcement of traffic laws and more focus on the behaviour of motorists?
It’s futile.
It’s futile because all it amounts to is talk, talk and more talk.
Meanwhile it’s the Wild West out there.
Where’s the Garda Traffic Corps? Do we still even have a Garda Traffic Corps?
I can’t actually recall the last time I saw a patrol car monitoring traffic.
I was watching a film the other night where a police car followed a motorist and pulled him over.
My personal response to this scene, was a disbelieving snort.
That wouldn’t happen in Ireland. How could it? The police are not out on the roads. They’re not enforcing anything. They’re certainly not policing driving behaviour.
If they go after anyone, it seems they’re immediately stood down.
How on earth do we introduce greater enforcement of traffic laws and more focus on motorist behaviour if the gardaí are being stood down every time they try to catch somebody who’s exceeding the speed limit or driving down the wrong side of a motorway?
Recently, on a short night-time trip – a journey taking no more than 40 minutes – I spotted more than six vehicles, cars and vans, with broken front headlights. I say more than six, because I only started counting after the first few.
In one case what I thought was a motorbike coming towards me in the dark, turned out to be – and on a narrow road – a great big heap of a van with a broken front light.
The reason they’re going around like that is because there’s nobody out there stopping them.
The number of gardaí allocated to roads policing has been reduced. That’s a given.
Garda management try to palm this off by maintaining that the figure of personnel on the roads remains consistently higher as a percentage of the entire organisation, whatever that means; anyway it’s just waffle when you take into account the sheer lack of garda visibility everywhere in the country as a whole.
No matter how the Garda Commissioner Drew Harris presents it, fewer dedicated staff simply means less visible policing. And, er, less policing.
Look around you and see the bad habits of drivers - the impatience, the road rage and the insane boy-racing carry-on.
If you don’t believe me, look out for the giveaway criss-cross of black doughnuts on every crossroads.
Start counting the incidents of impatient, often extremely dangerous behaviour of motorists you encounter at road junctions and while changing lanes on motorways.
A lot of motorists don’t bother to indicate anymore.
Drivers charge straight out of junctions without looking.
Drivers stop in the middle of the street outside a shop and fling open their doors without looking.
Many motorists no longer bother to use their indicator.
Motorists frequently sit in their vehicles in the middle of yellow boxes, exactly where they’re not supposed to.
Drivers now refuse to wait and give way to oncoming traffic if there’s a parked vehicle on their side of the road – instead they just whiz around it and drive right into your path, daring you to give way.
Drivers who obey speed limits are frequently honked at, tail-gated and bullied by other drivers who don’t.
The carelessness, high speed, sheer impatience and outright bullying on our roads is monumental.
I’m witness to that. A few Saturdays ago, I was crossing a supermarket car park, heading to the trolley stand. Without warning, and at unbelievable speed, a huge 4X4 reversed straight out of its parking space, and nearly hit me. I just saw it out of the corner of my eye and jumped for my life. It would have squashed me like a pancake.
I was so furious, I banged on the window of the passenger door. I asked the driver – a fit-looking, intelligent female, in, say her forties – what the hell she thought she was doing.
“You nearly killed me,” I said. “Don’t you look? Don’t you check your rear mirror and your side mirrors? You flew out of there like a bat out of hell and you very nearly hit me.”
I was trembling with fright and fury.
She was remorseful.
“I looked at the screen,” she said, indicating the state-of-the- art screen in front of her.
“No,” I told her, “you didn’t.” “Because I was right behind you and you nearly hit me. Maybe you thought you did, but you didn’t. You could have killed me. You could have left me with life-changing injuries because you were in too much of a rush to check your mirrors. How dare you!”
I was white with rage and fear.
She apologised profusely and went on her way.
And this is happening day in, day out.
There are no garda cars patrolling the roads to make people even consider driving more carefully. And if they were, and if say, a driver decides to speed up and get away, it seems the policy is for the squad car to be immediately stood down.
Most villages and towns have no speed bumps to force motorists to slow down.
There is nothing and nobody out there to force motorists to slow down or drive more carefully, or obey the rules of the road.
A couple I know, who are in their late sixties and who live in the countryside about 45 minutes’ drive from the city, recently turned down an invitation to a celebratory lunch in the city on a Saturday afternoon. The reason? They said are so intimidated by the driving behaviour of other motorists that they were literally too scared to come.
Would you blame them?
Think about all the hundreds of family members, friends, colleagues, neighbours and the wider community network who are impacted in some way by the loss of a single life on the road, who know someone left with serious injuries in the aftermath of a major accident.
So when I hear garda management and politicians hand-wringing and chest-thumping and squawking about the awfulness of the increase in road-deaths this year, I get really mad.
If there was any real concern, the government and Garda management would empower and resource the Garda Traffic Corps to get out there and put a stop this madness.
What we need is High Visibility Policing. High Visibility Policing. High Visibility Policing. It’s the High Visibility Policing thing, stupid.
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