Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I congratulate the Fine Gael Party and Deputy Olivia Mitchell for introducing legislation to address the most glaring omission in road safety in Ireland. I recently drove from Cork to Belfast and back and noticed that our roads are very dangerous. As the Minister does not live in Dublin, I am sure he drives home twice per week. I do not understand how we saw only one speed trap during the journey. While travelling at the speed limit, 70 mph, a bus carrying schoolgirls at the younger end of the secondary cycle passed us out with ease. The driver was travelling at speeds of at least 80 mph.

Evidence suggests that mobile telephones are dangerous. Recently I was stopped in traffic in the middle lane of three lanes, two of which go south, one north. A truck that dwarfed me turned a tight corner on an old street in Cork. The driver held the mobile telephone to his left ear with his right hand while turning the truck. One could not calculate the damage that might have been done had the driver miscalculated the turn or the wheel slipped. Professor Robert Winston, not a man to overstate or exaggerate the facts, deals with development and human behaviour. He recently carried out a fascinating experiment in which a policeman who was an expert driver, just like the drivers outside the door here, in an ordinary saloon car, did a chicane in 11.3 seconds. Mr. Winston asked the policeman to repeat it while he tried to distract him. Anyone would lose concentration while doing that. He distracted the driver by asking him to subtract 11 from 1,000 cumulatively. He got half way through the chicane before he lost control of the car. One cannot take in visual information and think at the same time. That is why the Minister should ban mobile phone use in cars as a matter of urgency.

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