Ulster road deaths fall to all-time low
Despite ongoing tragedy on Ulster's roads, BEN LOWRY investigates the historical trends of casualties, and sees signs of hope
EVERY few days in Northern Ireland, a household somewhere in Northern Ireland is shattered by the sudden horror of a road death.
"When I turn up at the door," recalls Superintendent Muir Clark of that unspeakable moment when loved ones are informed of a death, "I know that I am going to change somebody's life forever."
Mr Clark, who is head of PSNI traffic branch, says: "It is horrible to watch somebody's face when they open the door, the shock at seeing the police at the door and then watch them dissolve when you break that terrible news."
ANALYSIS: New roads key to safety
Yet, amid this seemingly endless cycle of heartbreak and carnage from the roads, a bright but barely noticed silver lining has been emerging.
A detailed News Letter analysis of road death statistics shows a gradual but clearly encouraging trend in which fatalities in Northern Ireland have been falling and falling.
Deaths are now at the lowest level since records began.
Increased road safety enforcement and relentless improvements to the engineering of both cars and roads have made motoring safer now than it has ever been.
Collision deaths were slightly lower in the decade 1930 to 1940 than in the last decade, the so-called Noughties.
But traffic levels were much, much lower in the 1930s than today.
This means that the risk to the motorist per-mile-travelled is now at an all-time low.
Road safety experts have welcomed the latest trends, but point out that there was a rise in road deaths last year compared to 2008, and that there is still much work to be done to cut deaths.
Yet even 2009 was the fifth safest year on record, despite the small rise.
Fatalities in 2008 were the lowest ever recorded, while 2007 was the third safest year since records began in 1931.
There has been a clear downward trend in deaths since deaths peaked in the 1970s, which experts attribute to advancements ranging from seat belts to speed cameras.
The head of the PSNI traffic branch Superintendent Muir Clark says: "While it is pleasing to see the trend continuing to drop, there is substantial work to be done over the next 10 years to see that number continuing to fall."
He tells the News Letter: "I am not proud of 115 people dead last year."
Andrew Howard, head of Road Safety at the AA, expects to see "continuous improvement" in the number of fatalities.
"Speed cameras have to have been a major factor in everything that has happened so far in this millennium," he says, referring to a similar UK-wide drop in deaths in recent decades.
"Although opponents are very vocal, around 70 per cent of the people surveyed find speed cameras acceptable."
Mr Clark says that speed is probably now the second biggest killer on the roads. He has recently introduced an educational course that is offered to people caught speeding a little over the limit, rather than penalty points. He says that motorists are 60 per cent less likely to re-offend after such a course.
"If punitive punishment alone worked, I would be out of a job," he says .
He hopes to see average speed cameras on motorways, which eliminate speeding because they calculate the speed at which a car has travelled over a large distance.
"The challenge for me in the next ten years is changing driver behaviour and attitudes," he says. "The average speed camera does exactly that. At the fixed site cameras, people slow down and speed up again."
Having such cameras will free up resources to police country roads, which are the most dangerous roads due to hazards such as bends, countless openings and vehicles overtaking tractors.
Mr Howard says that there is a major challenge in making these rural roads safer.
"You still have an awful lot of rural roads that have barely changed their path
for decades, if not centuries," he says "This is why there are debates about lower speed limits, bringing it down from 60mph on rural single carriageways."
Mr Clark plans to deploy more police into those rural areas, "because 90 per cent of the roads in Northern Ireland" are those country roads
Mr Clark says that if you added together road deaths in Great Britain, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, around 3,000 people were being killed every year.
"That is six jumbo jets that crash and kill every person on board.
"People need to wake up to the carnage every single day."
Late last year, the environment minister Edwin Poots said that he was considering a night-time curfew on newly qualified drivers in a bid to continue to bring down the road death toll.
Mr Clark describes his job as "frustrating and depressing in equal measure".
"I have had to pick up broken bodies off the road – it is a picture I will never forget until my dying day.
He adds: "That is why i take my job seriously."
Mr Howard says: "Most of us will not be involved in a serious road accident in our lives and it is quite convenient to deduce from that that the way we drive and have always driven is the reason for that.
"In fact, mostly it is good luck."
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Thursday 09 February 2012
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