Irish Examiner view: How to kill the need for speed
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The latest figures from An Garda Síochána’s Christmas enforcement operation make miserable reading.
Between Friday, December 6, and Thursday, December 12, three people were killed and others sustained serious injuries in 13 collisions on Irish roads. There were 178 people arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. At least 2,244 drivers were detected for speeding.
More than 500 vehicles were seized for a range of Road Traffic Act offences and 329 fixed charge notices were issued for using a mobile phone while driving.
While this depressing toll illustrates that there are thousands of reckless drivers on our roads, unbundling the figures shows that there are some who should not be behind the wheel at all.
One motorist was caught doing 121km/h in a 50km/h zone of the N52 in Ardcroney in Tipperary. Another was clocked at 184km/h in an 80km/h zone on the R731, in Monamolin, Co Wexford; a third was recorded at 124km/h in a 60km/h zone on the N4 in Carrick-On-Shannon, Co Roscommon.
These are far from isolated incidents. In May, we reported on the case of a motorist who was clocked going 192km/h on a stretch of the N22 where the limit is 100km/h.
This was, we observed, almost as fast as the Grand Prix ace Ayrton Senna was travelling when he died at Imola 30 years ago. And we asked why extreme examples of driving at speed should not result in a lifetime loss of an individual’s licence?
Although that is draconian, it is also extreme that 167 people have died in road traffic collisions in Ireland to date this year. Last year was the worst for road deaths in more than a decade as 184 people lost their lives.
Ireland is supposed to have a plan to deal with this. It is called Vision Zero, with an initial goal of halving road fatalities in the Republic within seven years.
This appears fanciful without consistent improvements in enforcement and a permanent, and significant, reduction in speed limits. That will have the environmental benefit of reducing our over-reliance on petrol.
Even more importantly, it will save lives.
It is no cause for celebration that Aer Lingus is to end its direct daily service between Cork and Amsterdam in March. It reinforces the implication that the nation’s flag carrier is coming to regard Cork as an intermittent seasonal airport, rather than the major engine of growth many of its advocates would like it to be.
The route is one of the oldest from Cork, having been established in 1998. Aer Lingus currently operates one or two flights per day between Sunday and Friday each week. From St Patrick’s Day, March 17, 2025, that will be no more due to competition from the Dutch airline KLM, which started in 2020.
Aer Lingus will be offering summertime flights to the trendy, predominantly long weekend/city break destinations of Bilbao and Bordeaux instead of servicing the business hub that is Schipol Airport.
The Amsterdam route is the third busiest out of Cork behind London Heathrow and London Stansted. CSO data shows Cork to Amsterdam grew strongly post-covid, jumping from just under 160,000 passengers to and from both cities in 2019 to more than 191,000 in 2022 and more than 208,000 last year.
The Aer Lingus decision cuts the number of year-round flights it operates from Cork to just six, London Heathrow, Malaga, Lanzarote, and Tenerife, with Aer Lingus Regional operating flights from Cork to Bristol and Glasgow. The airline will offer seven seasonal routes to Bilbao, Lyon, Munich, Faro, Bordeaux, Dubrovnik, and Mallorca.
Pre-covid, Aer Lingus also flew from Cork to Paris and Lisbon. Daa CEO Kenny Jacobs said previously that, despite the talk of a transatlantic flight from Cork, the key to growing traffic was European destinations.
“There is no reason why Cork should not have Lisbon, Madrid, and Berlin on a year-round basis” he told the last year.
When the then taoiseach Seán Lemass opened Cork Airport back in October 1961, he said that it symbolised “the national purpose of Ireland”. A buoyant performance this year is expected to see Cork break the three million passenger threshold. But when Ryanair recently spoke of Cork being in a “different division” and a “separate league” to Dublin, it struck a nerve.
The question for strategic planners, airlines, analysts, economists, and politicians is how to gain promotion up that table. Dropping a long-established route which is popular with business people does not seem consistent with that ambition.
There’s a long-standing joke about the attitude of overseas embassies and diplomats to parking fines. They throw them away, and they never come back.
Those with their tongues in their cheeks might suggest that a similar policy is being pursued by Big Tech, with shock figures emerging about compliance with the punishments placed on them by the Dublin-based Data Protection Commission.
Figures released by the commission under Freedom of Information legislation show that, from penalties totalling €3.26bn over the past five years — most of them imposed on the major tech companies — only €19.9m has been paid so far. That’s 0.6%.
Many of these fines are being contested legally, but the tech industry likes to boast about its nimbleness and speed of action — except where it means parting with money it seems.
Time to pay is a frequent request made to courts, usually by those in straitened circumstances and without the mega resources and cash flows of Big Tech.
Ordinary people on the receiving end of penalty notices for speeding fines and parking know that they are often accompanied by a mind concentrator. This takes the form of doubling the fine if it is not paid within a certain timeframe.
That may help to persuade boards and chief financial officers to settle their commitments more quickly.
Otherwise, alternative means may have to be found to make the punishment fit the crime and to generate more respect for the work being carried out at Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin 2.