Penalty points lunacy

Drivers of motor vehicles in Ireland, Britain, Australia, Uganda and Kenya are required to drive on the left side of the road. In most other countries of the world, bizarrely, drivers are required to drive on the right side of the road. Driving on the correct side of the road is an important requirement. Driving lethal vehicles at speed on the wrong side of the road is liable to cause fatalities and should be discouraged.

Also discouraged should be driving up the wrong side of a motorway, however popular the practice may be among former ministers and other joyriders. Driving lethal vehicles into the path of other lethal vehicles being driven at speed is certain to cause injury and probably fatality.

Driving vehicles on the hard shoulder of a motorway is probably a bad idea. At the moment I can't think why but it may be confusing for other drivers and it may disturb the symmetry of road traffic, which is a pity. But among the transgressions perpetrated on the roadways, driving on the hard shoulder is not the most serious. It comes low on the scale of misdemeanours on our roadways.

Those responsible for safety on our roads and for the encouragement of safe driving have devised a system of penalty points to punish transgressions of road protocol. Incurring 12 penalty points triggers six months disqualification from driving.

Now you would have thought that the most grievous and dangerous offences would incur the most points. Driving up the wrong wide of a motorway is a pretty serious offence, and you would have thought that one episode of that would earn disqualification for at least six months - the full 12 points in one go. Failing to drive on the correct side of the road might also be regarded as fairly serious and most of us, I think, would feel that if one is caught twice at that, disqualification should follow - six points.

On the other hand, driving on the hard shoulder of a motorway, while inadvisable, can hardly be regarded as in the same category of these other offences, say one point.

The persons responsible for our safety on the roads have a different view. They believe that driving on the hard shoulder of a motorway is twice as grievous as driving on the wrong side of the road. Two penalty points for driving on a hard shoulder, one point for driving on the wrong side of the road.

So seriously do these persons regard the offence of driving on the hard shoulder that they accord it the same weight as driving up the wrong side of a motorway. Two points in each case.

Reversing from a minor road on to a major road. Guess how many points? One! Driving on a footpath? One point. Failure to comply with mandatory traffic signs? One point. Driving the wrong way up a one-way street? One point.

Driving on the hard shoulder of a motorway - two points!

Someone, somewhere in the Department of Transport thought up this scheme, other public servants approved of it and a Minister sanctioned it, the wondrous Martin Cullen, who previously brought us Farmleigh and e-voting.

It is not just lunacy; we are talking about people's lives here. The people who devised this scheme are the same people who have responsibility overall for road safety, along with the gardaí of course.

Safety on roads that have seen 18,000 people killed here (in the Republic) since 1969, over 3,100 people killed since the road safety strategy was launched in 1998, all three prongs of which (penalty points, random breath testing and driver testing) the Government failed to implement.

Essentially, road fatalities are high because we allow nearly everyone, almost irrespective of their capacity or willingness to drive safely, to go out on highways and drive lethal vehicles and to do so without oversight or control.

There is huge public outcry, or at least political outcry, over the incidence of murders here. About 50 people are murdered here per year now.

Eight times that number are killed on the roads. How is it that road fatalities are not a major political issue?

It is, I think, because we have absorbed the conviction that driving a private vehicle is a core ingredient of liberty. It is one of (excusing the sexism) "the rights of man", even at such huge human cost.

Cars have not only taken over society (as I argued last week), they have taken over our minds.

What other area of human activity that causes the deaths of so many people would we think must remain undisturbed? On 9/11 in the United States of America, fewer than 3,000 people lost their lives. Every year there, over 40,000 people are killed on the roads.

We have had world wars over the 3,000 people who were killed, but the 40,000 road fatalities are part of the American project, the American way of life.

And in what other area of our political life would we accept, almost without criticism, the sheer reckless lunacy of the penalty points?