Brennan to focus on global road safety in address to UN assembly

The Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, is to focus on the global aspects of road safety when he addresses the UN General Assembly next Wednesday.

Mr Brennan, in his capacity as the president of the EU Council of Transport Ministers, will tell the assembly of EU plans to halve the 40,000 deaths per year on European roads by 2010.

Mr Brennan will also suggest a greater focus on road safety in developing countries, where the majority of the annual 1.2 million road fatalities, and 50 million injuries take place.

He will also tell the assembly that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that if current trends continue, the number of people killed and injured on the world's roads will rise by more than 60 per cent between 2000 and 2020.

Meanwhile, Mr Brennan is to bring new measures before Cabinet in the coming weeks to tighten up regulations for motorcyclists.

A spokesman for the Minister said two groups of motorbike riders did not seem to be getting the message about road safety: young first-time motorbike riders and those who returned to motorbike riding in affluent middle age and bought bikes which were potentially too powerful for them.

Among the changes the minister intends to introduce are a raising of the age at which youths can gain a provisional driving licence for a motorbike, from 16 years of age to 17. The spokesman said the Minister would have liked to raise this to 18 but he was limited by an EU directive. The Minister also intends to make it mandatory for all provisional driving licence holders to display L-plates.

L-drivers are not currently permitted to carry pillion passengers and the use of L-plates would make enforcement of this rule easier for gardaí.

Mr Brennan is also anxious that motorbikes should be easily seen by other road users. Bikers will be required to wear brightly reflective clothing and have their lights on during daytime hours.

The spokesman said Mr Brennan was expecting some resistance from bikers over the clothing regulations, because bikers generally preferred black leather, but he said the "fuss should soon die down".

The proposals also include the Minister's plans to introduce a system where no driver will get a provisional licence for a motorbike until they have successfully completed a specified number of hours of training. "No training, no licence," said the spokesman. Proposals are also being worked out to apply the same criterion to more mature drivers who may have a full licence entitling them to drive motorbikes without them ever having done a bike test.

Another aspect of the measures to be brought to Cabinet is the ending of the system which allows drivers to continue driving on successive provisional licences without having taken a test, or having taken one, failed. Since the Minister announced the advent of this proposal last year, the number of driving test applications has risen from about 65,000 to about 130,000.