Thanks guys, but in truth i'm only saying what 99% of every driver out there is thinking. For the government to come out and say this is another road safety initiative and then say that they are going to give truck driver's who hit over-head bridges 3 points because it cost the government 25 million to repair the bridges last year is surely admitting that this is geared towards extra revenue income and not a desire to make our roads safer
Here is an interesting bit of reading:-
According to the National Roads Authority, the main contributing factor to the large number of road fatalities in this country in 2004 (96%) was the behaviour of the road user.
* The behaviour of drivers contributes to 88% of road fatalities
* The behaviour of pedestrians contributes to 8% of road fatalities
* Road factors contribute to 2% of road fatalities
* Environmental factors contribute to 1.5% of road fatalities
* Vehicle factors contribute to 0.5% of road fatalities
The main behaviour causing death and injury remain the same and include
* Excessive and inappropriate speed
* Driving while intoxicated, whether through drugs or alcohol
* Failure to wear seatbelts and failure of parents to restrain their children properly
* Failure to recognise vulnerable road users
* As pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists we fail to recognise our vulnerability and fail to ensure we can be seen by others when using the roads
* Driving while tired could also be a contributory factor
Note that 88% of road fatalities in 2004 were driver behaviour related compared to 0.5% caused by vehicle factors.
The following report from 2007 backs up these finding yet again -
http://www.rsa.ie/publication/public...ook 2007.pdf
Some excerpts from it
-1.11 Contributory Actions to Road Collisions
In single vehicle fatal collisions, exceeding safe speed limit was cited as the main
contributory action in 47 per cent of collisions. However, in two vehicle only fatal
collisions - see Figure 9 (page 10) - the most frequently cited contributory action
is went to the wrong side of the road (41 per cent) followed in turn by other
action (24 per cent), exceeded safe speed limit (19 per cent), drove through
stop / yield (8 per cent) and improper overtaking (8 per cent
1.10 Contributory Factors to Road Collisions
The contributory factors listed by members of An Garda Síochána on collision report forms
changed little from 2003 (see Table 17 on page 23). Driver error accounted for 82 per cent
of all contributory factors identified in fatal collisions, while the next most listed factor,
pedestrian error, accounted for 13 per cent. Road factors accounted for 3 per cent of all
listed contributory factors. The breakdown of contributory factors to fatal collisions are
shown in Figure 8 below.
Table 17 Fatal and Injury Collisions Classified by Possible Contributory Factor Where Specified
Contributory Factor Fatal Injury Total %
Driver 134 3,511 3,645 86.4
Pedestrian 21 333 354 8.4
Road 5 130 135 3.2
Vehicle 0 11 11 0.3
Environment 3 72 75 1.8
TOTAL 163 4,057 4,220 100.0
Yet again vehicle factoring accounts for 0.3% of fatalities
The cost of collisions was based on those as outlined in the 2004 Goodbody
Economic Consultants report entitled Cost Benefit Parameters and Application
Rules for Transport Project Appraisal which was commissioned by the
Department of Transport. Using the updating mechanism as set out in the
Goodbody Economic Consultants report which is to inflate the year 2002 cost
values to 2007 values, using the growth in Gross National Product (GNP) per
person employed, the estimated cost of all fatal and injury road collisions
reported to and recorded by An Garda Síochána in 2007 is 1.38billion. There is
an increase in cost of collisions despite downward trend in fatal and injury
collisions.
Table A2: Total Cost of Road Collisions in 2007
1 Source of GNP per person employed Growth rate = CSO
1.13 International Comparisons
On the basis of road deaths per million population, in 2007, the latest year for
which international comparative information is available, Ireland is ranked ninth
out of the EU-25.
(Sources: IRTAD and ETSC)
Type Number of collisions Cost per collision Total cost ()
Fatal 309 2,891,435 893,453,472
Serious 618 386,286 238,724,498
Minor 4,540 38,045 172,725,207
Material Damage 23,770 3,044 72,346,752
Total 29,237 N/A 1,377,249,928
How Mr Lenihan would love to re-coup some of that 1.37 billion!!
If vehicle road worthiness is that important that it deserves 3-5 penalty to be issued why isn't there an abundance of road safety adverts on tv or the press warning you of your cars un-worthiness? Because it doesn't deserve it. How many people excessively speed or use mobiles or drive in a careless fashion? I would take a rough guess at lets say 10%-20%. That means that the governments revenue from fines can only be obtained from this amount of drivers and that's assuming every motorist in this percentage is caught and fined. By targeting the car owner, who has to have an nct, the government is enlarging its revenue potential to 90% of motorists. This is simply a revenue generating scheme for an inept government
