How To End The Carnage On Irish Roads

The Irish media has been inundated over the last few days with debate about how to deal with the dangerous driving on our country’s roads.

This has been prompted by a weekend of utter carnage in which eight people lost their lives; five men, one woman and two children. And though this is a particularly high statistic for a single weekend, it is by no means surprising; we have become accustomed to hearing about horrendous crashes and loss of life on an almost daily basis. From time to time we may wonder just how this could happen as consistently as it does. But to anyone who actually drives on these roads, the only shocking thing about the statistics is that they are not higher.

A few weeks ago I drove from Cork to Dublin to see a gig. The 3 1/2 hour drive was a horribly stressful experience. As is acknowledged daily on the national media, Irish motoring is treacherous at best. I use my car pretty much every day, and I regularly drive from Cork to Kerry. But it takes a good long journey to Dublin to really demonstrate just how bad things really are. So, I’ve decided to share with you some observations based on that trip and other experiences in the last few months.

1) The speed limits are a gentle suggestion, rather than a law. Nobody takes heed of them. If you drive at the speed limit, you will be overtaken by almost every car behind you. Fact. Not only that, but you will be invariably tailgated for miles while intolerant drivers wait for that window of opportunity to tear past you.

2) There are scumbags all over the roads driving tin missiles at ridiculous speeds. Paint me pink bigoted polka dots, but I am sick and tired of being p.c. when it comes to this issue. I am all for an inclusive society, but let’s not keep out minds so open that our brains fall out. To me, some scobe in a Honda Civic crashing at 140 kmph into an oncoming car is the same as some scobe murdering an innocent passerby with a screwdriver. These people don’t care about the consequences of their actions, how easily what they are doing can end in the wanton destruction of human life. They don’t care because it hasn’t been taught to them – and even if they do mow down some innocent pedestrian, they know perfectly well that it will be treated as a motor “accident” rather than manslaughter or murder in a court. A fine, then jail for a few months, maybe a few years. So what?

3) Just to provide an example of the above: On the way to Dublin, we stopped at the house of an acquaintance. While there, an unknown friend of that friend arrived into the house and announced, proudly, that he had just been racing a new car. “That was fastest I ever drove”, he said, “150 mph”. Just to reiterate, folks: that’s One Hundred and Fifty Miles per hour. On the main Cork to Dublin road. Now, why would this idiot walk into a room and say something like that? Simply, because he knows that he can. And that’s the typical Irish attitude; if you can get away with it, then it’s acceptable. It’s a little anecdote to share with others, even people you’ve just met.

4) Irish motorists take the stupidest risks on a regular basis. Aside from the aforementioned tailgating, the most common is overtaking at totally inappropriate places, not to mention speeds. Driving home to Kerry from Cork yesterday, my sister and I both saw, within five minutes of each other, two near-collisions on the main Cork-Mallow road. Both were approaching bends in the road, and both doing at least the speed limit. The first one, in particular actually had to swerve at the last second to avoid ploughing into oncoming traffic. And you know what? Noone blew their horns, everyone carried on as normal. Why? Because this reckless behaviour IS normal on Irish roads. This happens all the time. It is common knowledge that if you drive certain routes, you are guaranteed to see people driving like maniacs.

There is a very simple solution to all of this. And it bypasses the whole debate over whose fault it is – the RSA’s, the drivers themselves etc. Because at this point, all that is moot. The simple solution is this.

r

Ready? Here we go.

UNMARKED CARS.

Let me explain with another example. On that same stretch of road I just mentioned (Cork – Mallow), there actually was a garda presence yesterday. And it was this: A big white Garda car parked on the side of the road, barely hidden, and blatantly visible at least about 5-10 seconds before actually passing it. The SUV that had just passed me out, doing about 130 kmph, slowed down to the speed limit as it passed. About 30 seconds later it had accelerated to its original speed and soon vanished from view. That Garda car being there was totally useless. And even if he gets three penalty points and a fine, so bloody what? He can still get back in his SUV and drive away, safe in the knowledge that the odds of actually being caught again are miniscule.

If the Gardai stopped driving around in stripy white cars with the word GARDAI emblazoned across the front of it, maybe – just maybe – they’d have more chance of actually catching people breaking the law, don’t you think? Because, let’s face it, the methods they are using at the moment are all but useless.

Why, for the love of God, don’t they just go out in unmarked cars? This simple move, implemented on a wide enough basis, would have a massive impact on drivers’ behaviour. At the moment, if you speed all the way through your road trip and don’t encounter one of those big white cars, you know you’re grand. There are no repercussions whatsoever for your behaviour, and you will do it again. It becomes habit, as does all the aggression and impatience that you’ll feel when stuck behind someone actually obeying the limit.

But if that car you just overtook at 140kmph suddenly hits sirens and flashing lights, pulls you over and spits out a pair of pissed-off cops who have caught you red-handed in the act of endangering the lives of other motorists (or even if you saw this happening to someone else) – you would seriously think twice about doing it again. If there’s even the vaguest possibility that the guy in front of you doing the limit is a cop, you might at the very least wait for a safe place to overtake.

The debates raging in the media about rolling out speed cameras, making drink driving laws more strict, enforcing provisional licences etc are all basically, distractions. And Fianna Fail badly needs these distractions at the moment, because the entire transport infrastructure in this country is a complete joke. In this country, if you have to get from A to B within a certain time, then you drive. The buses are totally unreliable, expensive and the drivers are often petty little Hitlers who could care less for the people they are transporting. The train service is even worse; they are prohibitively expensive, you are not guaranteed a seat, and the service has known to actually take longer to reach their destination than buses on the same route. That’s defying the laws of physics.

These services only survive because they are government-subsidised and have a total monopoly on the industry. They go on strike whenever they want, at the drop of a hat. Hey, they even decided to pull one over the weekend! From The Belfast Telegraph:

“Iarnrod Eireann has had to cancel more services this afternoon due to unofficial industrial action by some train drivers. Ten commuter trains operating on lines through Connolly Station have been cancelled due to the action, which relates to a dispute over rosters. This morning’s 6.30am Portlaoise to Dublin train and this evening’s 5.30pm service from Dublin to Carlow had already been scrapped as a result of the row.”

“A dispute over rosters“. I think that almost every person I know who has ever worked in shift jobs has experienced disputes over rosters. But they didn’t deal with it by going on strike, because the irresponsibility of doing so would have lost them their jobs. “Unofficial industrial action” basically means that these guys can do whatever they want, whenever they want. And the government allows them to do so with impunity. There is no responsibility, no regulation, no accountability for anyone. For Christ’s sake, is it even possible for one of these guys to get fired?

I don’t mean to seem facetious. Indeed, all of this would be funny if it weren’t so intimately connected to the carnage on our roads. People are avoiding using public transport, with good cause, and this means more and more cars on our streets, roads and motorways. And the total lack of effective motor law enforcement means that the CIE credo of “no responsibility, no regulation, no accountability” swells to embrace the dangerous drivers who know that nobody will police their actions.

Because without actual physical Garda presence on the roads, in a capacity that actually puts the fear of getting caught into people, nothing will change – absolutely nothing. It is the attitudes of motorists that need to be addressed. Graphic advertisements don’t work. News reports don’t work. The Gardai have to do their jobs as protectors of the peace and get out there and start catching dangerous drivers in the act.

And if using subterfuge is the most effective way to achieve that, then so be it.

Irish Transport Prices Go Up AGAIN

I heard on the news this morning that CIE are putting up the prices of all of their services (Bus Eireann, Irish Rail, Luas, Dublin Bus) yet again. This has become something of an annual tradition in Ireland.

The media has been filled with callers and voxpops from commuters who say that these costs are totally unjustified. Why? Because there has been no improvement in the actual service.

At the same time, pay rises for managers in many semi-state companies (including CIE) have been announced. These are the CEOs of organizations rife with needless bureaucracy, “jobs for the boys” and virtually no accountability on anyone’s part. Since there is no real competition in the market (due to government monopolization and the stranglehold of the unions), there are no standards for service whatsoever. Drivers are often rude and abusive.

The buses are so filthy and the service so bad that when Aircoach (an independent company) began their route from Cork to Dublin / Dublin Airport, they reported that for the first few weeks, many consumers repeatedly asked if these were private VIP buses. Irish commuters were unfamiliar with regular, punctual buses, fair prices, courteous drivers and buses that weren’t covered in shit.

The other week, my sister got the train home from Cork to Kerry. She decided to take the train to get home faster, since the bus can take up to 2 hours. Guess how long the train took? 2 and 1/2 hours. That’s right, it took a half hour longer than the bus. That’s a train versus a bus, folks. That’s tantamount to defying the laws of physics (and, needless to say, it cost more).

Why does this situation persist? I think it’s a combination of two things. Firstly, it’s our government’s complete lack of any guts. They refuse to take on the unions, because the unions can a) lose them lots of votes and b) hold the entire public-transport dependent population of Ireland hostage whenever they want. Secondly, it’s the Irish public’s dislike of standing up for themselves. As bizarre as this may sound, we seem to have a collective inferiority complex. When was the last time you saw someone talking back to a bullying bus driver or rail conductor? It never happens. We grumble and call up Joe Duffy, but what good is that on a practical level?

But the semi-state workers are well able to stand up for themselves, oh yes. One man alone can cause a strike to happen and disrupt the travel arrangements of thousands. Don’t believe me? It happened yesterday. That’s right, the day before CIE prices went up and CIE pay rises were announced, a CIE employee managed to bring the rail line between the two largest cities in Ireland to a standstill because – and get this – he asked for “a premium shift payment for specific inspection duties — and he launched unofficial action when that higher payment rate was denied.”

What??

Are they employing children? You don’t get what you want, so you can disrupt the plans of 2,000 people? If that was any sort of real company, that employee would have been fired on the spot. But no. Instead, this whining maggot is mollycoddled, and to hell with everyone else who is depending on the service to get to work, see their families, get hospital treatment etc.

This is bureaucracy gone mad, and symptomatic of a larger problem – we have start standing up for ourselves.