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National Safety Council (NSC)
National Safety Council Campaign
Letter Two
Dublin Cycling Campaign ,
12 Millmount Grove,
Windy Arbour,
Dublin 14.
13th-May-2003
Dear Mr Costello,
Please find attached the details of our agenda and representatives for the meeting this Friday at 3pm at your offices.
DCC- William Andrews, Brendan Ryan, David Maher.
There are a number of specific issues safety issues that warrant the NSC undertaking advertising campaigns specifically aimed at increasing public awareness of the dangers associated with unsafe and illegal practices that are common on our roads.
Safety Information Campaigns
1. Facts of the effect of speeding in built up areas on pedestrians and cyclists -
A pedestrian hit by a car at
- 40 mph has only a 15% chance of surviving.
- 30 mph this chance increases to 55%.
- 20 mph the chance of survival increases to 95%
2. Illegal parking - focus on the danger caused by illegal parking on footpaths, double yellow lines and bends. This should specifically focus on the parking of heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in residential areas - it could also be used to make the public aware that they do not need to tolerate this as the goods vehicles can not legally be parked in such locations.
3. Mobile phone usage - the recent government study found similar results to that of the 1997 New England Journal of Medicine (news - web sites) report that found talking on a phone while driving quadrupled the risk of an accident. Talking of speaker phone still more than double the chance of an accident.
4. How lawless are we ? - public information campaign showing how much more common it is break speed limits or drink and drive in Ireland compared to other countries. Also how much less likely we are to caught. This is vital to making people realise that what is tolerated on our roads is a scandal and ensure that there is public support for tough policing.
Road Safety Policy - direction and Credibility
1. The NSC should be about ensuring there are "safe roads for all road users". Clearly our proposed suggested wording that the NSC should make a simple statement, that "the primary responsibility of all road users is not to act in a manner that endangers the safety of other road users" is in keeping with this policy and indeed is in keeping with your statement of road users accepting responsibility for their actions. This clearly is not the case at present.
2. Again I must re-iterate that the NSC point out to the NRA that at present they do not provide a break down of all road deaths, but particularly those of pedestrians and cyclists, in terms of what the lethal weapon was i.e. of the number of cyclists killed each year were they killed by HGVs, cars etc. The NSC needs this information as they are the key groups that the authorities need to focus their attention on i.e. should be the data that safety strategy is formulated from.
3. Compare compliance and enforcement levels to best international practice. Enforcement is the key. The cornerstone of the NSC has to be if you don't comply you will get caught. To believe that people will comply simply because the NSC asks them to do so is clearly insane. For the NSC to be a success it has be part of a credible enforcement campaign and demonstrate to the public that this is the case. Yearly compliance surveys should cover speeding, safety belt wearing, drink driving and illegal parking. The results should be broken down on agardai district basis.
4. Raise the issue of rampant illegal parking on footpaths and dangerous bends etc. that seems to be accepted as the norm in city suburbs, towns and villages. Surely it is the responsibility of the NSC to ensure that safety issues are identified and that the relevant enforcement authourities are made aware of the problem.
5. Drink driving - outline what needs to be done to stamp out drink driving:
- random breath testing.
- when testing positive drunk drivers should have their licence revoked with 3 days (Australia the norm is 24 hours)
- of fines and penalty points for adult passengers accompanying driver who are stopped (and subsequently convicted of) drunk driving. A similar system has been operating with great success in Japan for a number of years.
6. Controlling access of HGVs. From point 2 above position where HGV pose an unacceptable risk on our roads will clearly become apparent.
7. A vital safety tool that has not yet been used is the introduction of 20 mph (30 kph) speed limits in residential areas. This is currently the norm is many european cities e.g. within 2 years 75% of Amsterdam's residential areas will have a 30 kph speed limit, and London is looking to make 20 mph in residential areas the standard.
8. Rolling out of effective automated speed enforcement. In Ireland we have 3 cameras, in the UK they will soon have 4,500 speed camera positions.
We look forward to our meeting.
Yours truly,
David Maher.
PRO Dublin Cycling Campaign. (Affiliated member of the Irish Cycling Campaign)
