School bus tests a priority for safety authority

A review of the testing and certification of commercial vehicles - among them school buses - is one of the priorities of the Road Safety Authority (RSA), which was formally established by the Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, yesterday.

Chief executive of the RSA Noel Brett said the review, awarded to consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers on Thursday, was an integral part of his overall priority of reducing road deaths.

It will assess the effectiveness of current vehicle tests and testing methodology and is to be completed in eight weeks.

Five teenagers were killed in a school bus crash in Kentstown, Co Meath, in 2005 and in Clara, Co Offaly, a 15-year-old boy was killed in April of this year when the school bus in which he was travelling overturned. Mr Brett said the review was an integral aspect of this road safety strategy and added that he didn't have "to draw a picture" to link the review to the school bus sector. Other "pillars" of the strategy aimed at cutting the number of road deaths by 150 per year were:

• the introduction of compulsory driving lessons for driving licence applicants;

• the offer of outsourced driving tests to applicants by the end of this month;

• increased regulation of the driving school sector.

Mr Brett also told The Irish Times that the "foundations" of his strategy had already been laid as the RSA had been informally appointed since May last.

He revealed that the introduction of compulsory lessons would be first introduced for motorcyclists and would involve a set number of lessons which applicants would have to take before they could take a motorbike on the road with a provisional licence. Currently motorbikes represent just 2 per cent of vehicles on Irish roads but account for 12 per cent of collisions.

The outsourcing of the tests was well advanced he said, adding that letters of offer to driving testers were being sent out this week and would be followed by offers of tests to applicants before the end of September. He said the backlog would be cleared within 18 months, after which the waiting time for a test would be down to about six weeks.

He said regulation of the driving instruction sector would be introduced, as would a series of educational measures, particularly for "at risk" groups. These included elderly pedestrians who had featured in recent fatalities. He also said road safety would be introduced to transition year students this year and would be extended to other levels of the curriculum in the coming years.

"We kill 10 people per 100,000 on the roads here," said Mr Brett. The RSA is aiming to reduce the death toll by 150, a figure which would bring Ireland into line with international best practice. The best practice countries see 5.5 to about 5.6 people per 100,000 killed each year. The level in the Republic is about 11 per year.

The RSA will now take responsibility for the provision of a range of services including driver testing, driver licensing, issue of digital tachographs, enforcement of road haulage regulations including drivers' hours, road safety promotion and research, oversight of NCT service and commercial vehicle roadworthiness testing, random roadside vehicle checking and driver vocational training.

The RSA headquarters is in Ballina, Co Mayo, where 129 staff will be based. In addition, the RSA will have 41 staff based in Loughrea, Co Galway, and 139 staff based in 52 driving test centres across the country.