Dáil debates

Wednesday, 21 June 2006

Road Traffic Bill 2006 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed).

 

6:00 pm

Photo of Pat CareyPat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

Like other speakers I welcome the Bill, which is a useful provision. There is broad agreement among Members of the House on its provisions.

I am not suggesting anybody has done so but we should resist adopting a preacher tone in the House of "do what I say" rather than "do what I do" because if we start telling people they should be doing this, that and the other, some of our comments will come back to haunt us.

We should resist blaming young drivers or women drivers, who are the easy targets, for everything that is wrong in road traffic. The reality is that we have some difficulties that must be resolved and this legislation will go some way towards doing that. I commend the Minister for introducing this legislation.

It is obvious to anybody who travels the country that the road network is constantly improving. The main roads are particularly good. Reference was made to the need for well-engineered roads. I could not agree more. The more recent ones are examples of high quality engineering but there is no doubt that our secondary and lesser used roads are still not up to the standards all of us would wish. Quite a number of roads still have badly maintained surfaces, potholes and so on and as Deputy English said, if a motorcyclist hits a pothole, regardless of whether it is big or small, the chances of that person surviving are not great.

To this day I have a memory of a Sunday afternoon many years ago when I was no more than seven or eight years of age. I was sitting on a wall in front of a neighbour's house when a motorcyclist hit one of those potholes and a fatal injury was suffered by one of my friends sitting on the wall beside me. The carnage continues.

On the other hand, with such a volume of car ownership and traffic levels generally it is surprising there has not been an even greater level of carnage on our roads. I do not in any way condone the numbers killed, which are horrific. On a Friday, Saturday or Sunday morning one is guaranteed to hear that on a well-maintained or new road somebody or a number of people have been killed, very often in single driver accidents.

The mentality of the population concerning drink driving is changing dramatically. That is particularly true in the case of younger people. It is somewhat unfair to say young drivers drink and drive. They do not. Many of them do not drink and drive because they have paid a small fortune not just for the car but for the sound system that thumps out music as they drive along. Drink is not an issue with many young drivers but it is an issue with many mature drivers who take a long time to give up old habits. New ways of getting the message across are required. I am impressed by some of the recent advertisements on television. They are dreadful to watch but the message sinks home.

I spent a few days in the south west over the bank holiday weekend and saw many public houses using a local taxi service, and paying for it, to ferry home some of their customers. That is a welcome trend. If somebody wants to have a few drinks they can do so and then travel home by public transport or transport provided by somebody else.

How far away are we from being prepared to tolerate a zero alcohol limit when driving? I was not a Member of this House when an attempt was made by a previous Minister to lower the blood alcohol limits. I believe, and I will not be popular for saying it, that we should work towards the European levels because it is no longer tolerable for somebody to drive with any level of alcohol in their blood.

The Bill provides for mandatory alcohol testing, which I support. Like other speakers, I saw an increased presence of Garda checkpoints and other checks over the past few weekends. I do not mind if I see five or six gardaí manning a traffic checkpoint and pulling in seven, eight or nine cars at a time. It frightens the daylights out of most drivers but the message goes out quickly that gardaí are out in force and we must be much more careful. We must leave the car at home and use the designated driver.

On the issue of blood alcohol levels, it is unsatisfactory for anybody to say there is not a mechanism to monitor the level of drugs in one's system. Anybody who sees the prevalence of cocaine and other drugs being mixed with alcohol knows well that a huge number of people are driving around with a high level of drugs in their system. I read some research mainly done by UCD and in 2000 and 2001 — this goes back to a piece from 2004 — 1,000 samples revealed legal limits of alcohol or no alcohol level at all. Out of those 1,000 samples, however, 679 tested positive for drugs. Those positives may have resulted from prescription drugs or insulin that might have been in people's systems. Nonetheless, the individuals' driving would have been impaired.

I encourage the Minister of State to work towards enabling the carrying out of research. I am aware that even in Scandinavia, which has a highly developed system for monitoring substances in the blood, the authorities have not yet managed to devise a tamper-proof system as regards the presence of drugs. It is not good enough to merely state, as one Minister did in 2002, that matters need to be taken more seriously. Professor Denis Cusack of UCD said in recent days that the most dramatic element of his team's research in the past two years has been the number of driver blood samples testing positive for cocaine. The Minister for Transport, Deputy Cullen, said that it does not appear that anyone has yet cracked the issue. However, we are anxious to move ahead because it is a matter of growing concern. Perhaps some PhD research student might provide valuable insights into how to overcome that particular problem.

Reference was made to knowledge of the rules of the road. I totally agree. When I first started teaching, it was expected that students in fifth and sixth class should, as the Minister of State will recall, be taught the rules of the road. People knew them in English and in Irish. I do not know what has happened to all of that but the practice should be reintroduced.

We carried out a very valuable exercise in Dublin and I believe it is still being done. There was a fine traffic school in Clontarf to which children at primary and early post-primary school level could go. There was a track there for them to travel around, mostly on bicycles. Obviously, they did not have access to cars. They were tutored on how to negotiate roundabouts, what to do when coming to a yield or stop sign, etc. Some Members might recall participating in such exercises when they were still at school. I support those who argued it would be a worthwhile exercise for a module to be introduced in transition year where students would have access to motor vehicles of one type or another.

There is a tendency for parents, particularly those in Dublin, at Christmas and also when their children make their communion or confirmation to buy small quad bikes, micro motorbikes or scooters for them. On Christmas morning last year, I was driving in Glasnevin towards the N2 when I met three small quad bike users coming in the opposite direction, on the wrong side of the road. They were aged 12 to 14 years. Luckily, it was Christmas morning and there was virtually no traffic on the road. Increasingly, however, we see these bikes being used in neighbourhoods in Dublin. I ask that those who advertise in newspapers to the effect that these can be bought and are safe to reconsider their actions. They may well be safe, but they are illegal. The Garda has repeatedly said that it is illegal for those under 16, without a licence tax or insurance, to use them. The Garda in the Finglas-Ballymun area is impounding them, but I have seen them being fairly widely used elsewhere.

I suspect that the following is an example of what goes on at night when the roads are pretty clear. Over the bank holiday weekend, owners of quad bikes in County Kerry raced each other along a very busy beach. Indeed, motor cars were being used to do wheelies, hand-brake turns etc. Driving along some of our newly opened roads, such as, for example, the N2, one sees tyre marks which indicate that much reckless driving has taken place in recent weeks.

The issue of speed limits has been mentioned. It baffles me that there can be such incoherence regarding the way that the speed limit system is operated by local authorities. Everybody talks about the area from the Red Cow roundabout to Newlands Cross and beyond. I talk more about those urban or almost inner city areas where there are traffic limits which clearly are too high and ought to be reduced. I strongly support the idea of having a 20 km/h speed limit in residential areas. Many people would welcome that and it ought to be enforced. In my view, it could be enforced.

A number of speakers referred to cars from other jurisdictions being used by people from other parts of the European Union and outside it, as well as those from Northern Ireland, and driven at very high speeds and carelessly on our roads. The Bill provides that penalties can be enforced against such drivers in the same way that they can be used against anyone from this jurisdiction.

Anyone who has had cause to use some of the arterial routes where heavy vehicles drive will know that few if any of them adhere to the 50 km/h limit. I wonder whether there is merit in trying to enforce the speed limiter issue on trucks and indeed on cars. I am quite impressed by what I have heard from people even older than myself who suggested that earlier in the life of this State there were speed limiters on cars for drivers who had recently passed the driving test. I am not sure whether that is the case but if it is, it would be worthwhile reintroducing.

Deputy Johnny Brady mentioned the difficulty relating to the enforcement of penalty points. The British-Irish Inter-Parliamentary Body, which I have the honour to chair, is working towards trying to persuade the British and Irish Governments to introduce a mutual enforcement of penalty points, North and South. That would be a significant measure if it were introduced.

The Garda traffic corps is an important new development in enforcement. Deputy Naughten referred to the issue of resources. It is clear that the Garda Commissioner, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and the Government are providing resources to the Garda traffic corps. Rather than its members driving up and down relatively empty bus lanes or swanning around on high-quality bikes, however, there should be greater levels of enforcement by the Garda traffic corps. I have yet to see a member of the Garda traffic corps get off his or her bike and relieve a traffic jam at a junction, for example, or take a proactive measure that would make a difference to the use of the road. However, I look forward to the greater use of the traffic corps.

I wish to reiterate something I have stated previously, although I presume it will again fall on deaf ears. Dublin is twinned with San Jose. I visited the latter city in 1998 and I was impressed then by the level of on-board computers that are available to the police there. I cannot understand why the Garda does not have such technology, which provides ready access at a checkpoint to drivers' details. These details should include whether the person has a valid licence, whether the car being driven belongs to that person, the level of insurance relating to the vehicle and so on. This would be better than waiting ten days before a driver decides whether to provide the relevant information at a Garda station. It is a question of tightening enforcement and regarding this issue as important.

The matter of mobile phones has been debated to death. It is clear that anybody using a mobile phone in a car should have a hands-free kit. I have not gone into the minutiae of how to enforce what is proposed. On balance, we should wait to see if it is enforceable. I have no doubt that some lawyer is probably waiting for an opportunity to test whether this provision is valid. We have all seen drivers — we may be obliged to include ourselves in this regard — talking on their phones while trying to reverse up laneways. That is irresponsible and criminal and it endangers other road users.

I do not have a great difficulty with the issue of privatising the service relating to the provision of speed cameras. As long as the service is effective, plenty of cameras are provided and used and there is no abuse of the data compiled, I do not have a problem. The so-called "hair dryers" are a deterrent and the more of them that are brought into use the better. I would prefer to see these instruments used on minor and secondary roads. Even though I have no difficulty with them being used on motorways, the fish in the barrel syndrome has been mentioned. It is more likely that they would be more effective on lesser roads.

I welcome section 19, which deals with the detention of uninsured, untaxed and unlicensed vehicles. We have come through a period in which there were many such cars on our roads. There is an ambiguity regarding the entitlement of the Garda to seize such vehicles. I am pleased that this is being dealt with in the Bill, which I welcome.

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