Ireland
 Road Safety Vision, Plans, and Targets
The current Irish government strategy includes:
- reducing the incidence of speeding by 50% (base year 1997)
- increase seat belt wearing rate for front and rear seats to at least 85%
- reduce by 25% the number of fatal road accidents (commonly alcohol-related) occurring during the hours of darkness
- implement accident reduction measures at more than 400 additional national road locations.
In the estimates of the Irish strategy plan, there are no details about the effects of vehicles being safer. If there are any effects, they are mainly due to EU regulations that contribute to (collision) safer vehicles coming onto the market (e.g. via EuroNCAP). Research shows that better vehicles reduce the annual number of casualties by 1% (Broughton et al., 2000). If this also applies to Ireland, it would mean a 4% reduction during the period of the strategic plan (and is, therefore, almost as important as the other ‘important’ policy measures). It is not possible for Ireland to achieve much on its own in this area, as it is a matter for the EU.
Road Safety Priorities
The Irish road safety programme identifies a wide spectrum of common policies, priority areas and measures, together with time horizons for their implementation. The common policies are founded on four cornerstones: enforcement, harnessing best technology, multi-agency co-operation and wider public ownership. The following priority areas and key actions (or measures) constitute the Irish road safety strategy.
- Enforcement
- Education and Information
- Engineering - both the development of safer vehicles, and safer roads
- Support development and introduction of new vehicle safety measures at EU level
- Implement new vehicle safety measures at national level.
- Introduce compulsory roadworthiness testing for cars
- Decide on use of daytime running lights
- Publish consultation paper on bus safety
- Complete low-cost remedial measures at 400 high accident locations on national roads
- Implement 5-year programme for traffic calming on the national road network
- Develop and extend Safety Audit and Safety Check procedures
- Actively deploy ice-detection monitoring system
- Complete Mapinfo Geographical Information System to enable better logging of accident data on non-national roads
- Implement a programme of accident counter-measures for non-national roads
- Legislation/regulations
- Organisation
- Research
Road Safety Management Organisation
The National Roads Authority is responsible for safer engineering of national roads, the analysis and research in relation to road safety, and maintenance of the National Road Safety Records Bureau.
The National Safety Council is responsible for the promotion of road safety awareness and education, alongside similar activities in relation to fire and water safety.
Statistics on road accidents are available in "Road Accident Facts", which is published annually by the National Roads Authority and based on Garda (i.e. police) accident reports.
Links
The National Car Testing Service Ltd. (NCTS) http://www.ncts.ie/, a member of the SGS Group, is responsible for the implementation and operation of the car testing service in Ireland. The National Car Test (NCT) is being conducted at 43 purpose-built NCT Centres nationwide.
The role of the Department of Transport http://www.transport.ie/ is to ensure the provision, development and regulation of competitive, safe and secure integrated transport services and transport infrastructure for the road, rail and air transport modes in Ireland.
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