Garda pulls speaker from road safety conference

Garda authorities have withdrawn a speaker from a road engineering conference after he said that the condition of the roads was a significant contributory factor to car crashes.

In an advanced press release for the Engineering Safer Roads conference, organised by Engineers Ireland local government division, Sgt Colm Finn, head of the Garda Forensic Investigation Unit in Dublin Castle, said road conditions played a significant role in the cause of some crashes.

"There is no doubt that a range of road conditions, including the state of the surface, the driver's line of sight and the location or absence of road signs, play a significant role in the cause of some road accidents and quite clearly, it is not always down to driver error," he said. He pointed out that there was no overall compilation of the unit's findings, but he was in no doubt that road conditions was a significant contributor.

Sgt Finn's comments attracted much media attention when they were released last week and he was withdrawn from the conference yesterday.

In a statement to The Irish Timesyesterday, the Garda Press Office said it needed to examine and evaluate the investigation unit's research further before it could reach the conclusions that Sgt Finn was suggesting. "His research is not completely finished, it would be premature to draw conclusions at this stage," a spokesman said.

It is understood that the advanced press release on the conference, including Sgt Finn's comments, was passed by the Garda Press Office.

Adrian Conway, chairman of Engineers Ireland local government division, said he could not comment on Sgt Finn's research as he had not seen the findings, but, from what was heard at the conference, from Irish and international engineering experts, "engineering does have a role to play in making roads safer".

Other speakers at the conference included Forbes Vigors, road safety project manager with the National Roads Authority. He said safety on two-lane roads here could be greatly improved by converting them to 2+1 roads.

Drivers were five times more likely to have a collision on a two-lane road than on a dual carriageway, he said, and 50 per cent of fatal collisions on Irish roads occurred when vehicles crossed the centre median.

A 2+1 road is divided by a narrow central reserve with a safety barrier. A two-lane section goes in one direction to allow for safe overtaking, which alternates to the opposite direction about every 2km. Overtaking is prohibited in the single-lane section.

"In Sweden they have a much lower rate of accidents on their single carriageways because they have a considerable number of 2+1 roads." The NRA, he added, had run two pilot 2+1 road schemes in Cork and Kilkenny and early results indicated that both were safe.