Ireland 'one of worst' for cutting road death rates

Ireland has one of the worst records in Europe for reducing road deaths, according to a report published today.

The European Transport Safety Council's (ETSC) road safety performance index lists Ireland 20th in a list of 29 states in a study tracking road deaths between 2001 and 2006 in the 27 European Union states, as well as Norway and Switzerland.

Despite Ireland's roll-out of the penalty points system, the introduction of random breath testing, high-profile advertising campaigns and the establishment of the Road Safety Authority (RSA), road deaths have fallen by only 10.9 per cent since 2001.

This is less than half the European average of 22.2 per cent and languishes far behind the likes of Luxembourg, which has seen a reduction of 47.8 per cent since 2001.

The Republic's record in cutting deaths on the roads is better only than the United Kingdom, which came 21st in the list with an 8.3 per cent fall, and eight eastern European countries, five of which saw road death numbers actually increase in the five-year period.

The ETSC report goes on to say that the reduction in Irish road deaths from 396 in 2005 to 366 in 2006 "may have arisen by chance" because the reductions are "small in relation to absolute numbers". This reduction, particularly at the end of 2006, is widely seen as corresponding with the introduction of mandatory random alcohol breath testing in August 2006.

So far this year 253 people have died on the State's roads, compared to 278 for the same period last year.

Better news for Ireland is the fact that we have the 12th lowest level of road deaths per million population, which is lowest in Malta and highest in Lithuania.

Luxembourg, France and Portugal top the list of road death reduction, all having cut deaths by more than 40 per cent since 2001. Only these three countries, the ETSC says, are on track to meet an EU target of cutting road deaths by 50 per cent between 2001 and 2010. About 39,200 people were killed in crashes across the EU last year.

Graziella Jost of the ETSC said that despite an overall positive trend downwards in road deaths "the net results are disappointing, as only a few countries are progressing fast enough to reach the EU target at a national level".

The dramatic reduction in Luxembourg (-47.8 per cent) has been put down to the priority their government has given road safety since 2004. The country has tough new laws allowing on-the-spot withdrawal of driving licences by police in serious cases of drink driving or speeding.

Portugal's reduction of 42 per cent is put down to the building of motorways, taking high-speed traffic off dangerous rural roads. France, which cut road deaths by 42.3 per cent, has seen fully automated speed control including 1,100 fixed speed cameras that saw a doubling of speed detection between 2005 and 2006. Other countries that have fared well include Switzerland (-32 per cent), Malta (-31.3 per cent), Belgium (-28.1 per cent), Denmark (-27.8 per cent) and Latvia (-27.1 per cent).

Eastern European countries continue to show poor road safety records, with the exception of Latvia and the Czech Republic.

Slovenia, Slovakia, and Poland all saw reductions in deaths of fewer than 6 per cent while Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Lithuania saw road deaths increase between 2001 and 2006.