wheels
Ireland owes a lot to Finnish financial expert Peter Nyberg, not only for his analysis of all the sins of omis- sion and commission which brought this country to a woeful economic crisis but for his pretty brutal state- ment that we, (a once proud and individualistic Republican people), have become slaves to a politi- cally inspired and media-stoked ‘groupthink’. Those who said and wrote that our financial course
was untenable, like Constantin Gurdgiev and David McWilliams, were scorned in a very derisory manner by the inner circle and also themassmedia, which had been taken in by this very powerful movement towards quasi-totalitarian conformity. Far worse, this groupthink infection has proved to
be a real pandemic – unlike the much-hyped flu scares – and has permeated almost every aspect of life in Ireland. Take a look at the reaction to deaths on our roads.
“It’s all down to speeding,”, the official groupthink line says and nobody dare say nay. When one looks at the exhaustive statistics pub-
lished by the UK Department of Transport for 2009, a country where road accident investigation is strict and exhaustive, a very different picture emerges:
Exceeding the speed limit was reported as a con- tributory factor in 5pc of all accidents, rising to 16pc of fatal accidents. These accidents accounted for 17pc of all fatalities.
Travelling too fast for the conditions was reported as a contributory factor in a further 8pc of acci- dents, rising to 10pc of fatal accidents. And 13pc of all accidents had at least one of exceeding the speed limit and travelling too fast for the conditions reported. These accidents accounted for 27pc of all fatalities. So, exceeding the speed limit or driving too fast for the conditions accounts for just 27pc of all road fatalities in the UK. Clearly, speeding as the major cause of most Irish road accidents must be called into question. However, just as with the era of financial ‘smoke and mirrors’, the truth is starting to come out.
Last November, a report in The Irish Times by
Frank McDonald and Tim O'Brien revealed that nearly half of Ireland’s road network has the lowest safety rating, when assessed to European standards. In comparison, only 5pc of roads in Northern
Ireland and 2pc of roads in Britain fall into the same low safety rating. So, is the ‘speeding the only cause’ a trumped-up charge? This is hotly denied by the Irish inner circle, as one might imagine. However, look at the official statistics in the UK, and speeding as the principal cause comes way down the list. How could we be so different? Very explosive answers emerged at a hearing of the Dáil Transport Committee within the last few months, when Fred Barry, head of the National Roads Authority and a highly respected sen- ior engineer with experience at top level in interna- tional engineering firms, stated that many of Ireland’s busiest roads are unsafe and substandard. “Many of our national roads do not come close to
meeting design and construction standards,” he said in one quote, before going on to state that “the issue here is one of funds. We would like to be making more improvements”. Then, Noel Brett, head of the Road Safety
Authority, gave evidence to the Committee, stating that at least 12 deaths in 2008 were linked directly to the condition of the road where the fatality occurred, along with a further eight deaths in 2009. According to a report in the Irish Independent, Labour TD Joe Costello described the revelations by Fred Barry as “devastating”, as they raised serious questions about the dangerous state ofmany of the country’s roads. In reality, these figures linking road conditions directly to deaths are likely to be the tip of the iceberg. We have all read about the multiple deaths on that noto- rious stretch of the N11 in Co Wicklow, either side of Jack White’s pub. There is another site of multiple fatalities in Donegal, not far from Muff, and there have been at least eight deaths over the years at a notoriously dangerous junction in CoMeath. This his- tory of multiple fatalities at one spot can be repeated across every county in Ireland, to a greater or lesser
‘So, €6m to fix roads admitted to be dangerously defective by the heads of the NRA and the RSA, against €57m for speed camera vans’
Summer 2011 Irish Director 59
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