A CO Limerick town was brought to a standstill yesterday when 204 balloons were released into the air to commemorate the number of people killed on Irish roads so far this year.
Students from John the Baptist community school in Hospital formed a guard of honour for the event, which was organised to commemorate World Remembrance Day for road crash victims.
The ceremony was particularly poignant for the local community, where 11 young people have died on the roads in the past decade.
Last January John Swords (21) and Ollie Kearney (22), who both grew up in the town, were in a single-car crash just hours after John Swords had attended the christening his two-year-old daughter.
The men were past pupils of the community school, which has been running a road-safety campaign for many years.
The transition-year campaign won the overall Young Social Innovators Award in 2007 and has been at the forefront of many other road-safety initiatives.
“There has been one fatality as a result of a road crash, involving a pupil or past pupil from the school every year since 1998, which is a very sobering statistic,” said teacher Deirdre Brennan, who is directing the campaign.
A more positive statistic is that 40 fewer people have died on Irish roads this year compared with the same period last year, she said.
“It’s very hard to quantify or to measure the effect of the awareness we are trying to build, but it is certainly having some effect.
“The main thrust of the work that we are doing here is that we are trying to instill in our school community a responsibility for our own behaviour on the roads.”
The community school campaign has also been involved in an initiative, “Don’t Break My Heart – Drive To Stay Alive”, funded by the Road Safety Authority.
Other initiatives include a prayer service for every secondary school in the country for World Remembrance Day 2009 for the victims of road crashes, and national poster, poem and song competitions.
“What keeps this campaign going is the absolute sheer belief in education and that young people must be educated about road safety,” said Ms Brennan.
Supporters of the campaign include President Mary McAleese, Jimmy O’Gorman of the Munster Council, Brian Cody and the Kilkenny hurlers, rugby player Paul O’Connell and Supt Tom Lundon of Bruff Garda station.