Having a multi-agency focus is key to ensuring an increase in road safety.
That’s according to a senior Garda in the Carlow Kilkenny Division who’s been reacting to the new ten-year Government strategy launched this week. (Details here).
A range of organisations are working towards halving the number of serious injuries and deaths by the end of the decade with plans to reduce urban speed limits to 30km per hour, and a portal for footage of offences.
Divisional Roads Policing Inspector Paul Donohoe says his team in Carlow and Kilkenny will continue to carry out their regular duties but they’ll be taking things to another level; “We’ll still be doing what we’re doing, I suppose, we’ll try maybe put a bit more emphasis on it as we go on, as we’re always trying to increase anyway, we will still look at our lifesaver offences; our drink-driving and drug-driving and then reducing speed is a big thing, speed, mobile phones, no seatbelts, they’re all lifesaver offences that have been proven for the years that are contributing factors to these serious accidents so we’ll just probably be upping our game a bit now but still be doing the things we always do”.
€3.8billion is set to be ploughed into the plan between now and 2024 and Inspector Donohoe says that type of financial backing will help; “We’re always looking to improve our roads because road-contributing factors often have a lot to do with accidents so yeah I’m delighted to see that they’re investing money into road safety because it’s so important, I think it will help and I think if Traffic Infrastructure Ireland get that sort of input of money we’ll be able to look at regional roads and minor roads and make roads safer, that is a major part of the action plan”.
