One hundred and five years ago this month, in London in August 1898, an Irishwoman, Bridget Driscoll, became the first person in the world to be run over and killed by a motor car, writes Kevin Myers.
The driver was an Arthur Edsall. Was there a ghastly cosmic joke at work, that Henry Ford had already named his son Edsel? And was it some automotive witchcraft that the Ford Edsel saloon of the 1950s nearly brought the company to bankruptcy? Certainly, it seems as if we have been bewitched by the car. What other explanation is there for the idiocy and inertia which have been the twin poles around which we have built what laughably goes by the name roads policy in Ireland? Some aspects of Irish "policy" are so imbecilic as to require concealment from outsiders.
Over 300,000 drivers on the roads haven't passed the test. Moreover, for years it was almost impossible to get a test because the driving examiners' union wouldn't permit the employment of any further examiners. Government after government tolerated this morally feckless lunacy.
Even though a few days' perusal of the newspapers will tell you that young men on motorbikes are at risk from themselves and from others, we have policies towards them which could have been drawn up the day before Mr Edsall drove into Mrs Driscoll. Any 16-year-old can legally drive a motorbike on the public roads without having had a moment's instruction, never mind having passed a test. Why do we tolerate such nonsense, and simultaneously wax indignant at the thought of a 16-year-old having a pint of lager?
But even the test is a sorry joke: the motorcyclist on his bike and the examiner behind him in his car, doing. . .what? Shouting instructions? Bellowing, "Come back, I'm stuck in the frigging traffic"? Yes, yes, yes, all very entertaining, but lives are at risk here: real lives, with real loved ones who have to bear the grief and the tragedy of needlessly premature death down all the coming years.
Why does this not count? Why do people seem not to care? Why are not Sylvester Barrett, who effectively abolished the need for a driving test 23 years ago, and Michael Smith, who increased the national speed limit on even the smallest boreens to 60 m.p.h., not publicly reviled? Because their position in the annals of Irish road safety is quite unique: a good statistician could tell you how many lives were lost because of the policy changes they introduced. And that's some achievement to look back on.
It would be unfair, however, to blame those two men alone, because just about every party has been in government since their exercises in homicidal cretinism became law; and nobody chose to undo their measures. Policy - I use the word apologetically, for it is quite meaningless in any coherent sense - has responded to populist demand: and populism has demanded free access to the roads, but not seriously sought a reduction in road deaths by limiting that freedom.
Ten years ago, this column was proposing an all-party consensus on roads policy, based on the introduction of proper instruction and testing, the prohibition from the roads of drivers without full licences, and sensible speed limits which were enforced. Of course, nothing happened; not a single party made the reduction of road deaths a national priority, and thousands of people have since died needlessly.
But of course, the political parties were responding to populist expectation. And what can you say of people who will strap their children into their car-seats only on pain of punishment by the law? How stupid is that? And how much is such widespread stupidity the true author of this thing, "policy"? And populist stupidity was matched by policing stupidity: 50 m.p..h speed limits on roads well able to take 70 m.p..h or more, such as the Naas dual carriageway, and worse still, limits that were enforced. This had two outcomes. Firstly, it shoved Garda "enforcement" figures right up, because a single trap on such a road with an unnaturally low speed limit inevitably yields a large and happy harvest of offending motorists; and secondly, it brought law enforcement into utter contempt.
Yet there seems to have been no coherent policy of enforcement on more difficult roads, such as the N81 from Dublin to Baltinglass, which each Sunday is host to 100 m.p.h. motorcycle races. How many of these buckos have passed their test? And how many of them even have a moment's worry about prosecution for what they're doing? We know from Seamus Brennan's initiatives of last year that it is possible for Government Ministers to make a difference. Scores of people are alive today because of him. But continuing policy will have to be driven with energy and intellect, qualities which have been scandalously absent in our roads management.
Why have we two systems of measurement, speed in miles and hour and distances in kilometres? Why is the National Roads Authority still erecting signposts which make sense only if you know the road? Where else in Europe would you enter a motorway system with the sole options being "north" or "south", as you can the M50, with no guidance whatever as to what places lie in either direction? And where else do you get urban roundabouts with half-a-dozen exits, and not a single sign on any of them?
Enough. I've been writing about this for years, and it hasn't made a blind bit of difference. Over to you, Seamus.