Sir, – The Minister for Justice is clearly lacking insight if she believes the drop in detections in recent years is due to an improvement in driver behaviour (“Changes in ‘driver behaviour’ responsible for falling road traffic prosecutions, says Minister”, News, October 19th).
There is no data to support her position. An inference can be drawn that there are fewer detections because there are fewer gardaí on the roads to make those detections.
Her bald statement that “speed is still the number one killer” is similarly not supported by any data (I am presuming she meant excessive speed, by the way, she did not specify).
The Road Safety Authority fatality statistics record only date and time, type of road user, their age and the type of road. They do not record speed, vehicle and road condition, consumption of drugs or alcohol or mobile phone use. For pedestrian fatalities, they do not record if there was a footpath, public lighting or if the pedestrian was wearing reflective clothing. Our road traffic fatality statistics, therefore, as they are at present collated, are almost useless and any action based on same is just shooting in the dark. – Yours, etc,
PAUL STACK,
Maynooth,
Co Kildare.