New driving theory test aims to reduce deaths

A new driving test to include an examination on theory is to be introduced in an attempt to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries on the Republic's roads, the National Safety Council said yesterday.

Speaking at the publication of the Bacon Report on Road Safety, the chairman of the National Safety Council, Mr Cartan Finegan, said 458 people were killed in road accidents last year, a figure he described as completely unacceptable.

The new test which is to apply to all first-time applicants from next year will concentrate on a series of several hundred questions, some of which may be put to applicants in a 40-minute oral or written session. The NSC was unable to say exactly when it would be introduced.

Mr Finegan said the test would include "new" aspects of driving, such as using motorways and roundabouts, which would not have been part of the test 20 years ago.

Mr Finegan also expressed concern that 28 per cent of current drivers held provisional licences. Responding to questions on existing road safety programmes, Mr Finegan said the Garda's Operation Lifesaver, a crackdown on dangerous driving, had reduced deaths, on roads where it was implemented, by 12 per cent.

Mr Finegan said some of the greatest benefits would come "when the whole community takes ownership of the problem" and gets involved in local road safety committees, sponsored by county councils.

Such groups were to be set up under the Strategy for Road Safety under a programme called Working Together. Establishing these groups had not progressed as fast as he had hoped and the process "needs to be accelerated". "We need the private sector, the public sector, medical and civic groups" he said. He praised the input from the National Roads Authority which had installed, on a pilot basis, roadside signs detailing the number of people killed on those roads in recent years.

The chairman of the NSC's Road Safety Committee, Mr Eddie Shaw, said they had learnt from the Australian experience that when the community said where they wanted the spy cameras placed and the frequency of the "booze buses" to detect drunk driving, the results were much more successful.

The local community and the police recommendations had overlapped in more than 90 per cent of cases, he said.