Weekend road carnage prompts safety plea
The National Safety Council tonight called for high visibility gardai, speed cameras at accident black spots and more checkpoints after a series of accidents from midnight on Friday left seven people dead.
With 29 people dead on the country’s roads so far this month, the NSC urged the Garda Traffic Corps to blitz towns and suburbs to get drink drivers off the roads and ensure cars are fit for the streets.
A spokesman for the National Safety Council said: “There’s nothing like a blue flashing light at the side of the road.
“I’m afraid it’s like we are shouting from the rooftops and our voice is going in the wind. We have got to get the balance of exhorting people to do the right thing and that needs to be complimented by legislation being rolled out in an incremental but positive fashion.”
The NSC said the outsourcing of speed cameras had to be quickened with companies targeting accident black spot areas. The spokesman said cameras should be used to encourage road safety but not to rake in money from fines.
“There is no point in putting expensive cameras on motorways. They should be put on the back roads where over the last four to five years the National Roads Authority have determined the most hazards,” the spokesman added.
The weekend’s carnage brought the total number of people killed on the country’s roads this month to 29, well ahead of last year’s figures.
In the whole month of January 2005, 33 people had died in road accidents. The number of fatalities on the roads in 2005 was 399, the highest total since 2001 when 411 people died.
The latest victim, a 29-year-old man, died after his car ploughed through the railings on the Bridge of Peace in Drogheda before plunging into the River Boyne. The accident happened at about 3am.
Earlier in Wicklow a 19-year-old man died when the car he was driving crashed into a ditch near Ashford. The accident happened shortly after midnight at Ballinapark.
Elsewhere, a man and a woman were killed when the car they were in veered off the road and struck a telegraph pole and a pillar near Carraroe in Connemara. The crash happened at Kileen Road at 11.30pm on Sunday.
Meanwhile in Tipperary a man, believed to be in his 20s, died in a three-car pile-up on the Urlingford to Ballingarry Road. The crash occurred at Kilcooley, Gortnahoe at around 1.45pm on Sunday.
Two men aged 36 and 34 and believed to be from the Czech Republic were killed in a crash near Charlestown, Co Mayo. The car the pair were travelling in struck a tree at the roadside at Lavy More.
