Counties with fewer penalty points may not be safer

The trend, which emerges in an Irish Times analysis of data for road deaths and traffic projections, poses a number of pressing questions for those in charge of making our roads safer.

Is road traffic law enforcement more lax in counties which have more dangerous roads? Or do these counties tend to have smaller and potentially hazardous road networks?

Monaghan, for example, is the most dangerous county in Ireland with 13 deaths per 100,000 population. Yet, when measured in terms of traffic offences, Monaghan has the second-lowest rate of penalty points per driver.

Clare, on the other hand, has some of the safest roads in the country, with just two fatalities per 100,000 population. But when measured in terms of traffic offences it has the highest proportion of penalty points per driver.

The Road Safety Authority says this data needs to treated with caution because penalty points relate to the address of the driver, rather than where the offence took place. For example, a driver from Clare could commit an offence in Dublin, but the points would be attributed to Co Clare.

It says you can't, then, draw a firm link between the enforcement of road traffic laws and deaths on roads.

But Conor Faughnan of AA Roadwatch believes it has much to do with a person's chances of clocking up penalty points. He points to research which shows drivers who clock up one or two penalty points are less likely to accumulate additional points.

“This implies that the yellow-card concept works, so a driver who gets points tends to moderate their behaviour,” Faughnan says.

Road safety group Parc believes a fall-off in Garda enforcement over a number of years is the main reason for the recent increase in fatalities.

An eight-year period of falling road deaths came to an end in 2013. Last year, the number of deaths on the road rose again, up six to 196.

Government officials argue there is no single reason for the increase in deaths on the road. They point to an overall increase in traffic as the economy recovers.

It’s not all about checkpoints, some argue. The roll-out of mobile speed camera in vans has also helped to tackle speeding. For example, the number of speeding offences detected fell significantly – down from just over 70,000 in a six-month period in 2011 to just over 30,000 in a six-month period in 2012 – indicating that the system has had an impact.

But lobby groups such as the AA argue the “shortage of blue lights” has a real impact on driver behaviour.

An increase in the budget for the Garda’s traffic corps in the last budget was welcome, Faughnan says. But investment, he adds, will need to be sustained into the future if the trend of rising road deaths is to be reversed.