ON a quiet morning on Patrick Street, I was nearly knocked over by a Land Rover performing a hasty three-point turn.
I had to bang on the rear-view window of the SUV to stop it reversing over me and my bike.
It happened so quickly, I didn’t have time to manoeuvre myself out of the way, and instead had to thump the car and let out a roar to draw the driver’s attention to the fact he was about to crush me.
He pulled over afterwards and reverted to defensive mode initially, but quickly apologised when he saw how shaken I was. He got a fright too. He hadn’t seen me.
Holding back tears, I said: “If you drive an enormous SUV, you have to be extra careful - you can hurt someone so easily.”
Really, that sentence applies to anyone behind the wheel of any type of car. He apologised again and I cycled away, pumped full of anger and adrenaline.
This isn’t an SUV-bashing column - I’ve written plenty of times about the need for them to be consigned to history - it is an appeal for all drivers to pay attention.
An increasing number of people are being killed on our roads, and much of it is being caused by carelessness, or recklessness. Last year, 184 people died, an almost 20% increase on the previous year. The outlook for 2024 is not looking good.
For decades, Irish road deaths were continuing a promising downward trend. What is behind the recent reversal?
Have people forgotten the core rule that wearing a seatbelt will help save your life if you are in a crash? Has drug driving replaced the drink driving habit of older generations?
Do we fail to grasp how quickly things can go wrong when piloting a ton of metal at 80km an hour while at the same time using a mobile phone?
I went digging through Road Safety Authority (RSA) research looking for answers. There are RSA ads on the radio at the moment reminding us how many people have died on our roads in the last month. Maybe we need more radio, TV, and social media coverage to consistently remind us of some of the basic facts peppered throughout the RSA website.
Almost one in five (18%) drivers and passengers killed on Irish roads in 2022 were not wearing a seatbelt.
Driver distraction is estimated to play a role in up to 30% of all road collisions.
Drivers using a mobile phone are four times more likely to be involved in a collision.
Drivers spend up to 400% more time with their eyes off the road when text messaging than when not doing so.
23% of motorists admit to checking their phone notifications while driving.
1 in 10 Irish drivers admit to regularly texting while driving.
I find those statistics frightening, but not surprising. Look at any line of traffic waiting on a red light or stuck in a jam, and you are as likely to see the crown of a driver’s head as they look at the phones in their laps as to see their two eyes fixed ahead on the car in front.
Do we need something radical to deter drivers from flouting the rules of the road?
I have a friend who works in a big company that is paranoid about cybersecurity. Employees are given extensive training about how to spot dodgy emails and not click on suspicious links.
Given how quickly an organisation can be brought to its knees with a cyber-attack, the IT department assesses the workforce’s vigilance regularly by sending fake, but suspicious looking, emails to individual employees. If an employee falls for the trap and clicks through, their punishment is to go on a god-awful cybersecurity training day.
No worker wants to endure the boredom of an entire day of training, feeling the lifeforce ebb from them as a speaker drones on about something they’ve heard a thousand times.
My radical suggestion is something similar for driving violations.
How about any time a driver is caught on a mobile phone, running a red light, or breaking the speed limit, not only do they have to pay the fine, accept the penalty points, and go to court if it’s a serious offence, but they also have to spend a whole day of their life at a really boring driving safety awareness training day?
If they fail to attend, their penalty points could double every two months. Fines and penalty points are kind of intangible deterrents, but sitting on an uncomfortable fold-out chair in a draughty hall for eight hours listening to road safety messaging feels like an irritating punishment that might make people stop and think.
Over the St Brigid’s Bank Holiday An Garda Síochána mounted 900 checkpoints and tested nearly 5,000 drivers for alcohol and drugs. They arrested 161 people for driving under the influence, issued 110 fines for mobile phone use, 215 fines for unaccompanied learner drivers, 61 fines for no seatbelt, and seized more than 420 cars for having no tax or insurance.
Perhaps a percentage of these 967 drivers would not have taken the risk if they thought they would have to spend a day at driver safety training if they got caught.
Or, here is another much simpler radical thought that requires no strategy, resources or policing. How about we all just drive with the appropriate caution and love and respect for our fellow drivers so that everyone gets home safe every day?
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