Young drivers to be target of tough new proposals

Proposals for tough new restrictions on young and inexperienced drivers are to be presented to Minister for Transport Martin Cullen this week.

The Road Safety Authority (RSA) says it will be delivering a "suite" of recommendations to the Minister "within days", aimed at reducing the road death toll among young male drivers.

This follows another weekend of carnage on the roads, with five people travelling in cars, all men and aged 25 or under, killed in crashes and a pedestrian killed on Friday evening.

Three of the four young men who died in a two-car head-on crash at Threemilehouse, Co Monaghan, early on Saturday are to be buried today.

The four were aged between 19 and 21; a fifth man, aged 27, who was also travelling in one of the cars, is in a critical condition in hospital in Drogheda

Gardaí said the cause of the crash, which occurred at 2.15am on a wet secondary road at Kilnaclay, outside Threemilehouse, Co Monaghan, was not yet clear.

A Sunday Tribune photograph showed the speedometer on one of the vehicles frozen at more than 140 miles per hour (225kph). Some of the rear-seat occupants were not wearing seatbelts.

The weekend deaths brought to 303 the number of people killed on the roads this year, thereby exceeding the target of 300 per annum by the end of this year, which was set by the Government in its road safety plan for 2004-2006.

The chief executive of the RSA, Noel Brett, admitted it had been "an awful weekend on the roads" and said his heart went out to the communities who had lost loved ones.

However, he expressed frustration that people were prepared to drive at high speeds and that so many young lives were being lost.

"This is happening in spite of the fact that we have unprecedented levels of public information about the dangers of speeding and drink-driving, backed up by the highest ever levels of Garda enforcement for hand-held phones, speeding and drink-driving."

Mr Brett said the behaviour of 17- to 24-year-old drivers was the biggest issue for the board of the authority since it started work last month.

It was a measure of how seriously the issue was being taken that proposals were already going to the Minister, he said.

While he declined to specify the RSA's proposals in advance of the Minister seeing them, it is expected they will include a recommendation that restrictions should apply to new drivers in the first two years of their licence.

A different version of the penalty-points scheme, including a lower threshold for disqualification from driving, would also be applied to learner drivers.

In the UK, such drivers can be disqualified after reaching half the threshold for more experienced drivers.

The use of speed-limiting devices, such as restrictors or black boxes, on cars driven by young drivers is also being investigated.

Mr Brett expressed disappointment that the target of 300 deaths this year had already been exceeded but said it had been clear for some time that this objective could not be delivered on.

"All the key measures are in place, but it was a tough target to meet," he said.

He pointed out that more than 400 people were arrested for drink-driving last weekend, and more than 500 the weekend before. The number of arrests for drink-driving in September was up 71 per cent over the previous September. About 250 people per week were being caught using mobile phones while driving.

"We're satisfied the upward spiral in road deaths has been stopped, but we're not satisfied that the numbers are dropping fast enough," said Mr Brett.

So far this year, there have been 20 fewer fatal collisions and 13 fewer deaths compared to the same period last year.

The waiting time for driving tests had also been cut, from 62 weeks at the start of the year to 28 weeks now, he added. The target time is six weeks.