Why did this sudden reduction in the number of road deaths take place? There can only be one answer: it results from a radical change in driver attitudes and, more importantly, driver behaviour due to the introduction of the penalty points system in November. That introduction provided the missing fourth element of the national road safety strategy, which is just coming to the end of its five year run. The strategy was based on initiatives under four headings: education, engineering, enforcement and evaluation. Up to the very end, however, there was a gaping hole in one of the four. A table with only three legs will become wobbly: with four legs it is suddenly stable. The leg that was missing in this case, from the very beginning, was enforcement.