The Road Safety Authority (RSA) here in Ireland has faced a lot of criticism in the last few weeks as 61 people been killed on Ireland’s roads already this year.
Just last week, 30 road safety, cycling and pedestrian campaign groups described the RSA as “no longer fit for purpose”.
And the chair of the RSA has now gone on the defensive saying that the “level of non-compliance is just off the scale” and “enforcement is the missing link”. Basically, she’s blaming individual drivers for speeding, drink/drug driving, and being distracted by mobile phones – and also blaming the Garda for not catching offenders.
What is the RSA meant to do?
The RSA seems to be involved in a number initiatives to educate road users, and seem obsessed about giving out high-vis vests to as many people as possible – especially school children. They oversee driver testing and licensing, and also supervise the vehicle safety tests such as the NCT.
Their own mission statement reads:
Our mission is to make Irish roads safer for everyone. That means working in every way possible to save lives and prevent injuries by helping to reduce the number and severity of collisions on Irish roads.
Role of the RSA
It’s interesting that they say “working in every way possible to save lives”, because that doesn’t match with the perception of what they actually do.
If we look at the look at the hierarchy of controls, it looks like they mostly tinker around in the ‘Process’ and ‘PPE’ controls, which as the diagram indicates are the least effective ones:
Would the RSA be more effective if it changed its focus to the more effective hazard controls? I’m not sure they will be able to ban all cars in Ireland, but they could use their power and influence to deliver much more effective change.
One suggestion is that they should heavily involved in every road-building plan, enforcing that councils and government build safety into every road scheme. They should be at the forefront of fighting for safe places to walk and to cycle. In short they should ensure that the Elimination, Substitution and Engineering controls have been considered in every traffic scheme.
Instead of putting it upon individuals to act more safely, they should mandate that controls are in place that force people to behave more safely.
We build for speed
All too often, roads are designed for just one thing – to ensure that traffic flows as freely and as fast as possible. It’s all about causing the least inconvenience to the motorist.
But when we build roads that facilitate people to speed, then there will never be enough road signs, speed cameras, or Garda checkpoints that will stop that speeding. The only real effective way to slow people down is to design roads that force motorists to slow down.
People will naturally drive more slowly if the lane is more narrow, and perhaps less straight. People will slow down at junctions if a turn is less rounded. People will drive with more consideration for pedestrians and cyclists if the road surface changes to indicate it’s a mixed-use space.
If the RSA really wants to work in “every way possible to save lives” they should do everything possible to make driving less attractive in our city and town centres, support and promote all public transport projects, and force road schemes to put the interests of people walking and cycling ahead of those driving vehicles.
For too long the RSA has been complicit in victim-blaming more vulnerable road users. They have been obsessed about making pedestrians and cyclists wear high-vis clothing. And they think that an occasional campaign asking drivers to slow down is enough.
Well it’s not enough. And unless there is a serious re-think about real action on making our roads more safe, we’re going to continue to have far too many families torn apart by deaths and life-altering injuries on our roads.