International experts to address major road safety conference

Road safety experts from Australia, the US and Sweden are being brought to Ireland by the National Roads Authority (NRA) this week to address a major road safety conference.

The last time such a line up of international experts came to Dublin to address the issue was at a conference in October 1998 for the launch of the Government strategy The Road to Safety, launched by Taoiseach Mr Ahern and then minister for environment Noel Dempsey.

The conference theme is An Integrated Approach to Road Safety and the keynote address is to be given by Minister for Transport Martin Cullen.

The attendance at the conference in October 1998 included Geoff Cliffe and other members of the the Victorian Police force from Australia.

On that occasion Mr Cliffe recommended random breath testing, the State-wide deployment of speed cameras, and a penalty points system.

Key aspects of the strategy were never implemented over its five year lifetime and targets were put back year on year in successive annual progress reports.

In his advice to Government in 1998 Mr Cliffe said the key aspect of road safety was that drivers who transgress "need to know they are going to be caught".

He told the conference that a chronic problem of "attitude" had been changed in Victoria because of an all-stakeholder approach and a belief among drivers that the police and government "don't bluff".

The NRA said its two day conference, which starts on Tuesday, would concentrate on An Integrated Approach to Road Safety.

It will encompass a review of current best practice and a discussion on how an integrated approach as pursued in other countries, can help us to improve our road safety record.

Meanwhile, a new issue of the Government's advice to drivers the Rules of the Road is to be updated with translations available in up to eight languages.

The new edition of the book comes after an 11 year interval since its last reprinting, a time- scale which has seen the widespread opening of new motorways and high specification dual carriageways. It has also encompassed the introduction of penalty points, the national car test (NCT) and the changeover from miles per hour to kilometres per hour.