Ireland

In Ireland, 43% of Learner Drivers practice unaccompanied, leading to an average of 10-12 fatal road collisions amongst this cohort annually.

This dissertation examined and investigated the Learner Driving process currently established in Ireland with a view to evaluating its effectiveness.

As part of the EDT programme in Ireland, learner drivers are recommended to undertake 36 hours of supervised driving. There is no requirement to log these hours currently unlike international best practice where supervised training hours are logged. When learner driver practice hours are required to be logged in Ireland, there will be a cohort of drivers who are unable to access a vehicle or sponsor for on-road driving practice.

Fatalities arising from road crashes are unacceptable, however, it appears that society has accepted fatalities arising from road crashes as inevitable. While road traffic crashes may be an everyday occurrence, they are both predictable and preventable.

The goal of my research is to quantify, classify and identify the reasons why road crashes happen and develop a next steps approach to those fully licences drivers who break existing road traffic legislation in Ireland.

This initiative highlights the dangers of speeding with an aim of increasing compliance with speed limits, deterring motorists from driving at excessive or inappropriate speed and ultimately reducing the number of serious road traffic collisions this Christmas and New Year period in particular. To date, 156 people have lost their lives on Irish roads this year. This is 28 more than on this day last year. There has been some 1,172 serious collisions resulting in injury, often life altering.

Our annual appeal Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Ms. Hildegarde Naughton has announced that she intends to double the fine for failing to stop at a school warden sign. This will see the fine increase from €80 to €160. The announcement comes as the Road Safety Authority (RSA) and An Garda Síochána call on drivers to watch out for children as they return to school.

Children are our most vulnerable road users but they cannot be responsible for their own safety when using the road. They simply do not have the cognitive skills to be able to recognise danger, therefore programmes like the Back to School campaign and Safe Cross Code are vital in teaching children essential road safety skills at a young age. No child should walk or cycle on their own to school without supervision. This year marks the 12th year of this campaign. Every year we pick a different topic. In 2021 we launched our Guidelines to improving road safety around your school. The aim is to provide information and tools which will assist school management to develop and implement a road safety action plan in collaboration with the school community to reduce the risk of any incidents occurring during the commute to and from school. In 2020 our theme was about being cautious when children walk and cycle to school. In 2022 we are launching our new Virtual Learning Platform which is an innovative educational programme for schools.

There is increasing awareness that medical fitness to drive - the impact of many medical conditions on fitness to drive - is a neglected aspect of road safety, particularly as there is evidence that appropriate medical advice can reduce crashes (1). We have shown in this project that medical fitness to drive is neglected in medical training (2) and also in a ground-breaking study that the general population show impaired awareness of medical fitness to drive (3). Our project aims to rectify this with wide-ranging activities to improve awareness among healthcare professionals and the general population, working with the Irish Road Safety Authority and the National Driving Licence Service.
1. https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMsa1114310
2. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.4997/jrcpe.2020.322
3. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15389588.2020.1766684

Road safety: deaths on Irish roads are increasing year on year , the last three years have shown trends of increasing from 2021- 130 fatalities. 2022- 155 fatalities,to a current high of 88 deaths this year, which is already 10 more death on this time last year, we aim to educate young people on responsibility of driving to the next generation of drivers respecting all road users, ensuring they are fully informed of all topics associated with driving. In our, triangulated program.

This fully supports the Road Safety Authority, who have outlined several priorities in their 2021-2030 phase of vision zero, to reduce the number of deaths by 50% includes key areas,
Seatbelts ,Speeding,Driving while impaired drugs and alcohol tests and penalties , Campaigns, Older pedestrians, E scooters, Time to talk, Anti speeding, Cycling, Vision zero, J1 campaign. Speed Fallacy, Safe vehicles.
We address these targets in our modules.

The Road Safety Authority child car seat checking service - Check it Fits was launched on a national, full-time basis in 2013. Since then, the service has grown in popularity and trust among the public, and as a result, has checked over 50,000 child car seats and visited over 1,100 locations all over Ireland.

In a study carried out by the RSA in 2016, of over 5,000 car seat checks, performed at the RSA Check it Fits service, it was found that as many as 4 out of 5 (80%) child car seats were incorrectly fitted.

Seat adjustments, carried out by the checker at the Check it Fits service, are categorised by severity. In the same study in 2016, it was found that of the seats that were incorrectly fitted, just over 80% were classified as a 'Major' adjustment eg the fitting being excessively loose to make it almost ineffective in the event of a crash or harsh braking.

The rest were classified as either a 'Minor' adjustment, 'Incompatible' (with child or car), 'Condemned' (not fit for purpose). Although some adjustments were classified as Minor (eg twisted seatbelt), even minor adjustments can make a big difference in how effectively the child is protected in the event of a crash.

The challenge was that we urgently needed to reduce this worrying trend, to protect children on our roads and to ensure they were travelling safely. Because we have new parents joining our target audience every day, perhaps with little or no reliable information, we decided to focus our efforts on reducing the level of 'Major' adjustments we were finding. We knew that the overall statistic of misuse would naturally reduce as a result but we needed to focus on the adjustment classifications to start with.

With this in mind, we had to develop a strategy that would inform and educate parents on child safety in cars from the very beginning of their journey through child car seat usage, from before their child is even born, until that child reaches 150cm and 36kg.