GARDAÍ ARE planning a major road-safety campaign, including so-called drink-driving “super checkpoints”, across Dublin over the bank holiday weekend aimed at keeping the number of road fatalities at historically low levels.
Dublin has been singled out for attention this weekend because road deaths have not fallen in the capital this year at the same rate as the national average.
The Garda’s Operation Surround will be one of the biggest operations against drink-driving to date, running from tonight until the early hours of Tuesday.
Drink-driving checkpoints will be established at 16 key routes in and out of the city tomorrow evening in the area between the two canals.
Supt Frank Clerkin of the traffic corps said the operation would be high-visibility with a view to impressing on motorists driving home for the weekend that gardaí were out in force targeting drink-driving.
"It's also designed to catch the person that goes in for two or three pints straight after work on Friday evening and then drives home; that's the kind of person likely to get caught in the net," Supt Clerkin told The Irish Times.
He said the Garda’s tactics for Saturday, Sunday and Monday night would be slightly different in that large teams of gardaí would saturate target areas.
“We’ll test anybody that moves in those areas for drink-driving,” he said.
These super checkpoints, manned by large teams of gardaí, would operate for a number of hours in certain areas before moving on to new locations.
Marked and unmarked Garda cars would also be patrolling with a view to detecting motorists who were driving while drunk.
Supt Clerkin said Garda speed checks would also be out across Dublin city and county at the weekend.
Dublin is the focus of the Garda’s weekend effort because the number of road deaths in the capital this year, at 19, is down only one on the same period last year. The fall in fatalities has been more pronounced in other parts of the country.
Supt Clerkin urged cyclists and pedestrians to wear bright clothes and be well lit up.
It was vital cyclists accepted that they would “come off worst” if they collide with a vehicle. They should exercise extreme caution on the roads.
The heightened enforcement campaign is being launched as the numbers killed on the Republic’s roads have fallen so consistently in recent months that 2009 is on course to have the lowest number of fatalities since records began 50 years ago.
Some 189 people have been killed on the roads so far this year, down from 235 in the same period last year.
Barring a severe sustained run of deaths on the roads in the weeks ahead, the annual total should come in just under 250 this year, the first time deaths have been kept so low.
According to figures supplied by the Road Safety Authority going back to 1959, the lowest number of road fatalities occurred last year with 276 deaths.
The next lowest figure, of 302, was recorded as far back as 1960.
News that deaths have reached record low levels comes as Fianna Fáil backbenchers are strongly resisting efforts by Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey to lower blood-alcohol limits to further improve road safety.