Irish Examiner view: We must all take responsibility and cut the carnage on Irish roads
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The pictures tell their own story. In Monday's , we highlighted the human side of the country’s ongoing road death crisis. Some 93 people have died on our roads in the six months up to yesterday, and to see images of many of them put a human context on the carnage.
These were people whose families, friends, relatives, neighbours, and colleagues have been beset with grief because of their loss. So much promise now gone. So many lives taken when they had so much more to give.
We also had testimony from a father stricken by loss, a young hit-and-run victim, and a firefighter and first responder for whom the aftermath of road accidents is an often-daily trauma.
Spliced into their stories was the casual terror of their experiences and how tragedy can so often be plucked from the mundanity of daily life. The horribly sad randomness of such trauma was also startling.
The words of hit-and-run victim Olivia Keating resonated fiercely too, when she demanded of all motorists the duty of care bound on everyone who ever takes charge of a car, bike, truck, bus, motorbike or even an e-scooter.
Her assertion that “there is a recklessness that has
crept into driving and risks are being taken by people who simply refuse to realise the consequences [to others] from what risks they are taking” was pertinent and, worse, vividly true.
And her advice to all motorists to forget distractions like phones, screens, and all the other paraphernalia we as a society have become so dependent on, was also wise and germane in its validity.
People can and will criticise the authorities for failing to take action to stop the carnage, but more often than not the prevention of accidents and the concurrent loss of life is in our own hands. All road users have to accept that responsibility and act on it.
An interesting footnote to the plea by the Irish Blood Transfusion Service (IBTS) for blood donations, amid a critical lack of supplies here, was the appeal for new donors of African heritage.
Blood supplies across the country have been hit in recent weeks by a combination of people travelling abroad for holidays, a surge in covid numbers, and an abnormally high level of sickness within the community, leaving the IBTS with just two days’ worth of O negative and B negative blood groups.
Ideally, the IBTS carries seven days of stock of these blood groups, but the service’s director of operations, Paul McKinney, said it had issued 2,600 units some weeks ago which was the highest weekly total in the last five years. The two weeks after that saw 2,400 over units issued, creating something of a shortage. The service now needs donations to get it back to the seven-day level as swiftly as possible.
However, in yet another example of how our nation and its communities have diversified in recent times, Mr McKinney highlighted the need for donors of African heritage to come forward in order to “diversify the national donor base”.
While it has traditionally been a challenge to get younger people to donate blood, the service is now facing the additional task of getting donations from people of different cultural backgrounds, on the simple premise that with many different donors, patients get better blood-type matches.
Social media and advertising are being utilised to get the message out there, but it is clear that the need for blood supplies is not predicated by the colour of anyone’s skin.
It is said a week is a long time in politics, but between now and the runoff in the French national assembly elections on Sunday, the country’s electorate has a lot to consider, especially given the successes of the far right in last weekend’s initial voting.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party and its allies won 33% of the votes in last Sunday’s first round of voting and is poised for its greatest ever electoral performance. Sobering as this result is for many in France — not to mention across Europe — the gap between the two sets of voting will give many pause for thought.
Such was the collective shock at the performance of the RN that no sooner were the votes tallied and counted than the opposition, largely consisting of the left-wing New Popular Front alliance (which got 28% of the vote) and president Emmanuel Macron’s own centrist party (which got 20%), immediately engaged in a round of discussions on how best to stop the far-right.
With most of the 577 seats in the national assembly still up for grabs next Sunday, RN can secure a 289-seat majority, but rival parties are now discussing tactical voting plans, including the standing down of some candidates to ensure the victory of others, to try and stymie Le Pen and her party.
The tactical voting strategy known in France as the “republican front” has avoided splitting the vote in order to frustrate the far-right, anti-immigration party, but given the RN’s success in this election, its task will not be easy.
Undoubtedly opposition to the RN has been fractured and often partisan, but if the “march to the gates of power” by the party is to be stopped, then divisions and rancour have to be stood aside in the interests of the nation as a whole.
Macron’s decision to hold this snap election was said by some to have been borderline political suicide, but there is still time to mount a united and effective electoral defence. This week will, indeed, be a long one in French politics.