Double penalty points on public holidays have been introduced In other jurisdictions, including Australia, to help decrease road accidents and fatalities
Motorists who commit traffic offences on bank holiday weekends may face higher penalty points under new legislation proposed by Minister of State, Jack Chambers with responsibility for road safety. This is part of a proposed new suite of measures being brought to cabinet to address the recent increase in fatalities and serious injuries on Irish roads.
Under the new Road Traffic Measures Bill 2023, powers would be granted to vary the number of penalty points during specific times when road safety risks are higher. Road safety data shows bank holiday weekends have a higher level of road deaths and serious injuries linked to driving offences.
Over the February, June and August bank holiday weekends this year, there were 46 fatal or serious injury collisions, while there were almost 10,000 speeding detections across the same weekends. So far this year 149 people have lost their lives on Irish roads, compared to 114 in the same period last year.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, Susan Gray, PARC Road Safety Group, discusses new proposals for increased penalty points during Bank Holiday weekends
The move to increase penalty points for specific periods like bank holiday weekends has been successfully introduced in other jurisdictions, including Australia. Could this be a way to change people's behaviour and would it act as a deterrent for drivers? Professor in transportation at Trinity College Dublin Brian Caulfield joined RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime to discuss. (This piece includes excerpts from the conversation which have been edited for length and clarity - you can hear the discussion in full on Drivetime.)
"There's a couple of things to unpick in it," says Caulfield. "We did see when we introduced penalty points back in the early 90s that they were quite effective at changing driver behaviour. But the statistics [on this year's road deaths] they're hard to swallow. I think what the minister was looking at, was a similar scheme that was launched in Australia back in the early 1990s as well, where they doubled the number of penalty points - they call them demerits - in a number of states in Australia."
"What the research showed was that there was definitely an improvement. There was an about 20% reduction of fatalities, the number of people drink driving went down significantly also. However this was - and all of the research backs it up - coupled with a greater crackdown in terms of enforcement and that's the key thing, I think, if this policy were to be enacted," he explains.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's News at One, number killed on roads while out walking is at its highest level in 15 years
Caulfied says it's "great" to introduce policies like double points or slowing down speed limits, but we need enforcement to make sure the policies are effective. "Either more Gardai out there checking, using more technology - there's average speed cameras on sections of the M8 and that has proven to be quite successful. It's a matter of using all of this. I think anything that we do right now needs to be backed up by evidence and data from the RSA international best practice."
Could we engineer black spots out of roads?
Caulfield agrees that if black spots can be "engineered" out of a road or road surfaces can be improved, then we should be doing that too. While we seem to be investing less in terms of constructing roads due to climate reasons and things like that, we should always be investing in road safety," he says.
But he says it would also be helpful if academics could get access to the Irish RSA data on accidents and fatalities so it can be examined "from an outsider perspective". "We don't get that data, colleagues of mine in other countries would do," he says. This would allow academics to be "able to understand the trends and be able to go back with an evidence base and come up with a policy, evaluate that policy, and hopefully make a difference."
What about personal responsibility to be more careful?
"Everybody does have a role in this. But I do think guidance is needed by government and by the RSA, to act like this is something out of the ordinary," says Caulfield. "This increase in accidents seems to be out of kilter with other European countries."
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, new road safety education programme being launched following increase in road deaths
Caulfield highlights that when the RSA was set up initially, with Gay Byrne as the chairperson, the introduction of penalty points and the strong emphasis on improving safety at the time made a difference. "With the energy that was around at the time, we were able to do that. I think we almost need to do that again and we need to see more action from the RSA."
The delivery of safety messaging also needs to change, he says. "The ways in which messages would have been put out in the early 2000s on TV, aren't the ways the messages should be put out now. Because of the way media has changed and how we consume radio and television has changed. So I think looking at all of those things in the whole - and then also bringing people with us on this policy - change is very important," he says.
So we need a comprehensive awareness campaign?
"Pretty much. That's what they did in Australia when it came to the double points. There was a lot of research that was funded by the government for different Australian research institutes to look to see what was happening as part of these changes. We see that in European countries. Sweden is always pulled out as the one of the exemplars of road safety in the world. They plough a lot of money into the research that's required, to look at both the engineering and the black spots, but then probably even more important, the behaviour. To find out are these ads having any impact."
Sweden has some of the safest roads and lowest accident rates in the world. "It's those kind of things I'd like to see on the table as well: how we can bring a whole community together and all the stakeholders together," says Caulfield.
