Road safety is not a political football, says RSA chairman

Opposition politicians have been asked not to use pending road safety legislation as a "political football", thereby delaying its passage through the Dáil, by the chairman of the Road Safety Authority (RSA).

Gay Byrne said that with just weeks to the Dáil summer recess in July he hoped the Road Traffic Bill, approved by the Cabinet yesterday, would be passed before the summer. If it is, he said motorists can expect significant differences in speed and drink driving enforcement by October.

"We are praying that it will get through before the cursed summer recess - if the Opposition parties don't decide to mess about with it too much, making amendments and alterations. If it is stalled, it will have to come back in the autumn and God knows what will take precedence over it at that stage," he told Motors.

Byrne said the attitude of the public towards road safety has changed. Research published by the National Safety Council yesterday showed 87 per cent of people are against any form of drink driving.

"Road safety wasn't the flavour of the month for various long years. Now politicians realise for the first time people want something done." But Byrne warned that political attention on road safety was fragile. "The political focus may suddenly switch to Aer Lingus or some latest crisis and then you'll have lost Martin Cullen and Bertie Ahern and road safety will be a thing of the past."

Byrne said the new Road Traffic Bill would resolve a number of serious anomalies with driver training and testing.

"Our driving test is the most ridiculous situation ever. If you fail, you get in the car and drive away. Ten seconds before you pass you couldn't drive on the M50. Once you pass you can. Ridiculous. The test has to be rejigged completely."

Byrne said strict vetting of driving instructors was required. The RSA has drawn up a plan for the registration of driving instructors which will make it a criminal offence for a non-registered driving instructor to give driving lessons for reward.

Under this plan driving instructors will be vetted and their standard of teaching regularly assessed. "At the moment you can be a sex offender in Mountjoy on day-release and there is nothing to stop you putting an L-plate on your car, calling yourself a driving instructor and taking teenage boys and girls on to the roads to instruct them how to drive."

Byrne has also expressed frustration with the arbitrary nature of speed limits that he says are hampering efforts to foster compliance. "There are huge inconsistencies in the speed allowed on routes. County councils should have nothing at all to do with speed limits."

Since his appointment Byrne says he has received a huge volume of correspondence from people complaining about the idiocy of some speed limits: "What is coming out is the idiocy of some of the speed limits. On roads where it's impossible to travel at over 20km/h, unless you're deranged, they have 80km/h limits. All this idiocy and inconsistency is going on."

Byrne said he was also concerned at the disgruntled perception among many motorists that gardaí are merely shooting fish in a barrel by setting up speed cameras in high volume low risk areas. "Gardaí say this is not the case, so we have to try and deal with that perception."