Protecting the public from bad drivers

Sir, – Your report about the extremely low enforcement level in relation to drivers that have been disqualified (“Just one driver convicted for not surrendering licence out of 10,000 ordered to do so by courts”, News, June 14th) is shocking not just on account of the numbers involved, but in the way that responsibility seems to be bounced around between agencies.

There has rightly been a lot of analysis of the recent and tragic rise in deaths and serious injuries on our roads, but surely most other measures and proposals pale in comparison with fixing the system’s demonstrable inability to protect the public from bad drivers. – Yours, etc,

DAVE MATHIESON,

Salthill,

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Galway.

Sir, – Conor Lally reports on the abysmal failure to enforce our most basic driving laws.

Shocking as that is, I thought it illuminating to read the reaction of those public institutions which might be thought to have some responsibility for this dangerous mess.

An Garda Síochána says that the Department of Transport is responsible for the administration of the driving licence system, including the recording of disqualifications and the return of licences of disqualified drivers.

The Department of Transport does not refute this – it simply moves the goalposts. Its position, as reported by Conor Lally, is that it is indeed an offence for disqualified drivers not to surrender licences. But the almost universal failure to do so is not the real issue because disqualified drivers will drive whether or not their licences are surrendered. Rough translation: “We’re not doing our job but it matters not because it’s the job of the gardaí to pull in disqualified drivers who insist on driving”.

Meanwhile the gardaí say that the production by disqualified drivers of their licences in court is a matter for the Courts Service and the judiciary.

The result of all this pass-the-parcel nonsense is that one driver of the 26 prosecuted has been convicted in the past two years of failing to surrender a licence after disqualification.

In that time, almost 17,000 driving disqualifications were imposed by judges with licences surrendered in only 818 cases.

In short, about 16,000 disqualified drivers did not surrender their licences as required by law and one of them was convicted of this offence.

It is an almost-universal truth that a division of responsibilities between public bodies is the perfect cover for nothing being done. But in this case the bureaucratic inertia is tolerated at the cost of lives lost on our roads. – Yours, etc,

PAT O’BRIEN,

Rathmines,

Dublin 6.