Co-ordinated approach shows road deaths can be reduced

Just over a year ago, in mid-December 2007, the Meath Chronicle ran a large headline over a particularly graphic pair of photos of two fatal road accidents which posed the question: 'Can council road safety plan curb this carnage?" Both tragedies occurred in the same week that Meath County Council launched an ambitious strategy in a bid to halt the spiralling road death toll. The headline was as much a reflection of the community"s horror at two particularly awful fatalities on the N3 within days of each other as it was a provocative challenge to the county council to ensure it did something about the litany of road safety statistics over several years which had seen Meath regularly listed among the country"s worst road death blackspots. By June last year, six months on from the launch of the safety plan, we were reporting the fact that there had been a dramatic reduction in road fatalities in Meath and that the county was well on its way to meeting the target of a 25 per cent reduction in road deaths by the end of 2009. This week, it is immensely pleasing to be able to report that the number of road deaths has, in fact, plunged by a massive 43 per cent in the past year. This dramatic reduction has exceeded even the most optimistic expectations and is being put down to the effects of the major road safety plan initiated in Meath at the end of 2007. Just eight people died on local roads last year, down from 20 people in 2006. A total of 276 people lost their lives on the roads of Ireland in 2008, the lowest number since records began in 1959, so a downward trend nationally is also taking root. The worst year ever for fatalities was in 1972 when a total of 640 men, women and children died in collisions. Across the country, lives are being saved through a combination of road-users taking greater responsibility for their behaviour and a range of other measures involving Garda enforcement, education and engineering. In the context of the national figure of an 18 per cent reduction in fatalities, Meath has reason to be especially proud of its achievement this year. The county has gone from being - together with Louth - one of the worst regions in the country for road deaths in the past decade to one of the best in the space of a few years. Credit is due in large part for this meritorious accomplishment to Meath County Council. The council"s full-time road safety officer, Mick Finnegan, a long-time road safety advocate and a former Garda chief superintendent for this region, deserves particular praise for spearheading the successful strategy which has resulted in many saved lives. It was also most encouraging to hear Meath County Manager Tom Dowling say this week that, when it comes to road safety, there will be 'no scrimping' and that whatever resources are needed to reduce accidents and improve safety will be provided, nothwithstanding the straitened economic times in which local authority budgets are under severe pressure. While higher visibility policing enforcement on the roads has formed one plank of the council"s multi-faceted strategy, education in local schools is also playing a part, as has the engineering aspect of the plan which will see the council eliminate up to nine accident blackspots before the end of this year. Such a unified approach between the local authority and An Garda Siochana has clearly been very effective and should act as a template for other councils to copy. While such a reduction in deaths is obviously very welcome, bald statistics do mask the fact that eight families in Meath have lost loved ones in crashes in the past year, and the human aspect of such tragedies should never be forgotten. Although it will never be possible to eliminate road deaths completely, the past year has been most encouraging. There is, of course, a nagging fear that the past 12 months could simply have been a statistical coincidence and that road deaths could climb during the next year. Certainly, however, if the trend evident in 2008 were to continue into 2009, it could be said with some confidence that Meath is indeed winning the battle on road fatalities. One of the points made by Mr Finnegan at the launch of the Meath Road Safety Plan in 2007 was that it needed to have buy-in from the public to work - in other words, every motorist in the county had to play their part in helping to curb crashes by driving responsibly. Unfortunately, the evidence is still there every day on local roads of a small minority of individuals who pay no heed to any road traffic laws. For these people, enforcement is the only measure that will likely work. Until they are deprived of either their licence or their liberty, tragedies on the roads will unfortunately remain with us, albeit at a lower level than before.