Road accidents over weekend claim 11 lives

There have been more calls for Government action to curb road deaths following 11 fatalities over the bank holiday weekend.

Despite a series of high-profile initiatives by the Garda Siochana and State agencies in recent months, the level of deaths, at 252 so far this year, is running significantly ahead of last year's total for the same period.

The Government has been urged to introduce a penalty points system for driving licences and to review the rules which allow provisional licence-holders to drive for years without having passed a test.

The latest fatalities occurred in Kildare and Cork.

In Co Kildare, a man died after being struck by a car in the village of Prosperous. His body was found by the roadside at about 6.45 a.m. yesterday. i had initially treated the incident as a hit-and-run, but they ceased to do so after a woman came forward with information yesterday evening.

In Co Cork, two motorists were killed in a three-car collision near Mitchelstown on Sunday night. The two who died were named as Michael Meaney (40), of Burncourt, Cahir, Co Tipperary, and Gerard Rafferty (35), of Ballinhassid, Co Cork.

These three road deaths bring the total so far this year to 252, 15 ahead of the number of fatalities at the end of the same weekend last year.

The deaths appear to be following an established pattern whereby the majority of those killed in traffic accidents in the State are males aged between 17 and 30, according to Mr Pat Costello, chief executive of the National Safety Council. The highest concentration of accidents is between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. at weekends.

Speaking on RTE Radio yesterday, Mr Costello said that increased prosperity had led to a higher number of young, inexperienced drivers owning cars. He called for the introduction of a penalty points system, whereby drivers would lose their licences if 12 or more penalty points were incurred over a three-year period.

Stricter enforcement was vital, he said. Gardai should "be seen to be there on country roads and on motorways". He continued: "Consideration should be given to a graduated licensing system. What we're talking about here is appreciating the 17-to-30 age group, male mostly."

Mr Costello suggested that new licence-holders should be allowed no alcohol or drugs when driving and should possibly be prohibited from driving at certain times.

The Fine Gael TD for Longford-Roscommon, Mr Denis Naughten, has called on the Department of the Environment to adopt a "flexible and imaginative" approach to recruiting new driving testers and attracting retired testers back into the service.

Clearing the backlog of the 380,000 people who were waiting to take a driving test was vital to improving road safety, he said. "If a quarter of the driving population on the nation's roads are untrained and untested, or have failed a test, then there will inevitably be very serious consequences for some of those drivers and for others."

He said it was "nothing short of farcical" that any citizen could get a provisional licence and "drive a potentially lethal vehicle on our public roads for four whole years without once being asked if they even know the rules of the road".

Last week the Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Robert Molloy, said that a Road Traffic Bill including a penalty points system would be introduced in the Dail later this year.

In September an educational programme on road safety is to be introduced into the primary school system by the National Safety Council.