A chara, – A focus on “road safety” is an inadequate response to the appalling accident in Inishowen. As long as rural people have no transport options other than the private car they will be forced to live with its dangers.
Social life is by nature spontaneous, unplanned, and occasionally thoughtless. We cannot live full lives in which safety is always accounted for in advance.
The reason that these road accidents happen in the countryside and not in the cities is not because urban people are by nature more careful or better educated; it is because they have other ways of getting around.
As long as the Government persists in the damaging delusion that public transport is meant to make money rather than contribute to social well-being, and as long as the solution is sought in individual caution rather than collective planning, then our rural population will be forced to choose between social life and safety. Without a basic public transport service, the only way rural dwellers can live “safely” is to sit at home alone. – Is mise,
BARRY McCREA,
Ringsend Park Cottages,
Ringsend,
Dublin 4.