The head of the Garda Traffic Corps has said that for the first time, the force is beginning to overcome Ireland's drink-driving culture, with greater compliance emerging.
"The fear is now out there among people that they are going to be caught," Assistant Commissioner Eddie Rock told The Irish Times. "People are hearing stories of others being caught at checkpoints and so it's having a knock-on effect that we are starting to pick up. The message is getting through to people."
Mr Rock was speaking after the Garda revealed the number of arrests for suspected drink-driving over the bank holiday weekend was 372, the same total as last year's June holiday weekend. The figure did not rise last weekend despite much greater Garda enforcement this year. Gardaí can now also perform random breath-testing, a power which did not come into effect until the end of last July.
The Road Safety Authority (RSA) also revealed last night that road fatalities had fallen by 23 per cent since the introduction of random breath-testing.
RSA chief executive Noel Brett said in the last 11 months, 274 people had died on Irish roads compared with 354 of the previous 11 months.
Mr Rock believed apart from random testing, recent RSA advertising campaigns had also had an impact.
"We've also done some campaigns with the comedian Jake Stephens that have been posted on YouTube and some of them have been viewed over 14,000 times. We're going to do a few more of them because it's by doing things like that that we reach younger people much more so than going on radio and TV programmes."
The traffic figures released by the Garda yesterday also revealed fatalities so far this year, at 142, have decreased by 34 compared with the same period last year. Four people died on the roads last weekend compared with seven in the same weekend last year. Mr Rock said the numbers in the Traffic Corps had increased by almost 300 over the last year to about 900 at present. The full 1,200 strength is expected to be reached in the first quarter of next year.
While drink-driving detections remain a priority for the Traffic Corps, the greater compliance would allow much of its additional resourcing to be channelled into combating speeding. Mr Rock said that the new system of privatised speed cameras would be in place early next year.
Before then, new in-car cameras with speed detection capabilities would be installed in Traffic Corps' vehicles.
However, he insisted that the cameras would be used to make roads safer and would not be used by the Garda to raise revenues from speeding fines.