In fast lane to death on roads

Early analysis of the 1998 road deaths suggest that the State's drivers are bent on repeating the high accident levels of recent years. Between 400 and 500 people will die on the roads this year.

While both the Garda iochana and the National Safety Association wait for the recommendations of the inter-departmental study group set up by the Taoiseach into road safety, so far it appears that many drivers are ignoring the obvious lessons of self-preservation on the road.

The scrappage scheme - Government-subsidised replacement of ageing cars with new vehicles - and the general upgrading of the national car fleet resulting from economic improvement make it virtually certain that speeding will continue to be the single largest factor in fatal car accidents, gardai and the National Safety Council report.

Many drivers of the fast new cars on the roads appear to have no grasp of the basic physics of speed and energy involved in reaction time and braking distances. At 20 m.p.h. the stopping distance in perfect conditions in a new car is 40 feet, at 40 m.p.h. the stopping distance is 120 feet, and at 80 m.p.h. the stopping distance is 320 feet.

As a writer to the Irish Times letters pages last August on road safety pointed out: the energy in a moving body increases with the square of its speed. So, a car doing 40 m.p.h. has four times the energy of one doing 20 m.p.h. and a car doing 60 m.p.h. has nine times the energy of one travelling at 20 m.p.h..

The smooth, seemingly effortless climb in speed in a powerful new car only further disguises the truth that on impact, energy exchanges between vehicles - and by extension vehicle passengers - are far greater than might be expected by the unwary.

Speeding, therefore, reduces the driver's reaction time to potential dangers and increases the consequential damage in an impact. Sixteen people have already died this year directly as a result of this consequential damage. Even the gardai are beginning to suffer the consequences of under-training their young officers for driving the force's fleet of fast new squad cars.

Garda sources in Dublin say very few of the young officers driving squad cars in the city have received the force's nine-day standard driving course. Most are driving under an opt-out clause in the Garda code of regulations known as "Authorisation of Official Drivers" where an officer of chief superintendent rank gives permission to an officer with an ordinary driving licence to drive an official vehicle. Gardai know this as driving with "chief's permission".

Gardai in Dublin say there is concern about accidents involving young officers who are driving without instruction in defensive driving and safety techniques which are taught at the Garda driving school in the Templemore Garda College.

The low level of training is said to have arisen from a dispute between management and the Garda staff association over the driving course dating back to 1989 when new training procedures were introduced. While overall training of recruits increased to two years there were no compulsory driving courses for young officers.

According to gardai, this arose as a result of objections by some gardai in Dublin who were opposed to an influx of young trained drivers.

Asked about the numbers of young officers driving without ha ving received the training course, the Garda Press Office replied: "Regulations governing Garda drivers are contained in the Garda code [the book containing working regulations for gardai] and that is a confidential document."

No information was available about the numbers of officers driving on "chief's permission" or how many such drivers had been involved in accidents.

One senior source said the force had a low overall incidence of accidents. Although a young garda had been killed in an accident in Dublin in January, there had been no other deaths of gardai on duty in car accidents for several years.