There was a piece on road safety on Today FM’s Last Word with Matt Cooper today. Brian Farrell had a breakdown of the accident figures that he chose to interpret in a slanted, short sighted and biased way.
He simply recorded the phrase “it’s speed and alcohol” onto a dictaphone and put it on a loop. As much as the point was brought to him that some roads are atrocious and overtaking on them is a dangerous gamble, this was a man on a mission: To Ignore What Everyone Else Says And Just Plow On.
Almost 90% of accidents are caused by human error.
Yes, but that error also includes some eejit trying to overtake on a totally inadequate, narrow, dangerous road, because after 30 minutes he couldn’t take being stuck behind a sileage spreader anymore. Not an actual case, but we’ve all been there, especially on that narrow, winding, potholed boreeen that we call the main Limerick to Cork Road. I might call it a country lane, I’ve seen better driveways into farms, it’s a joke.
And he’s right: If we all stopped overtaking and just resigned ourselves to being stuck behind farm machinery at 40 mp/h for the vast majority of our trips, there’d be no accidents, no one would die, we’d have more time to admire the scenery and everyone would live happily ever after.
And that would be true if you lived in a country where gingerbread men fall from the sky, the fairies bring you your slippers and santa claus is your PA.
What he forgets is human nature. If the speed limit is posted at 100 km/h and some gombeen has decided he’s going to hold up the road at 60 km/h, people will overtake. Some will have more patience than others, some will have none and some will try to overtake 17 cars and a truck in one go at 180 km/h.
Simply calling the motorist names and threatening everyone (The “Tarzan Beating His Chest” approach, favored by such anti personal choice fascists such as Luke Clancy and Grainne Kenny) alternating with despair because “no one’s listening” doesn’t cut much ice.
“Human Error” is a constant and you have to take it into account when designing the roads in the first place. You cannot simply berate people and hope we will all miraculously change our basic human mindset overnight.
In some countries the introduction of 2+1 roads has reduced death due to head on collisions by 50%. That is a practical move, it works, it gives you the illusion of progress that will keep the most impatient from killing everyone else, therefore it could be called intelligent, so it could never work in Ireland.
We prefer some hairy gorilla beating his chest, we love people like this here, yeah, gimme some of that tough guy approach, just because it hasn’t worked for the last 20 years, doesn’t mean it’s not going to start working anytime soon!
Don’t get me wrong, enforcement is paramount, I cannot deny that, but there has to be some kind of payoff, something that shows the state or whoever understands, no one would mind.
But to simply cut and paste the phrase “Speed Kills” from the British road safety catalouge and passing it off as a comprehensive Irish road safety strategy is not enough. Brian Farrel clearly demonstrated he wasn’t prepared to listen to anyone’s voice but his own, sorry we have enough of these people droning on like foghorns, hearing nothing but the sound of their own voice and finding it quite pleasant, so I don’t feel the need to listen to him.
C-, do better next time.
