After a safer year on NI's roads last year, a safer one from fire too

One of the most obvious examples of improving safety has happened on our roads.

In every single year between 1966 and 1982 inclusive, more than 200 people died on Northern Ireland’s roads, and for several of those years the Province had more than 300 deaths.

But from the 1980s road deaths began to decline gradually and relentlessly as a range of road safety measures and rules and policies were implemented.

Since 2010 the number of people who have died on the roads in each years has always been below 100, and normally well below that level — last year it was 63.

Yet traffic levels have more than doubled since the 1960s and 70s. This means that road deaths when measured on a per-mile-travelled basis have plummeted by at least 80%.

Last year, Northern Ireland also had a safe year in terms of house fire deaths. There were four such fatalities, compared to nine the year before and 12 the year before that.

But whereas road deaths are a phenomenon of the last century or so, due to the relatively recent invention of the motor car, house fires stretch back centuries.

When the News Letter began publishing in the early 1700s, open fires inside a house and candles were a standard feature of nightly life. There would be no such thing as fire alarms for another 200 years.

Our report on page 7 mentions some of the tips that fire officers issue to further reduce the risk, which make useful reading. They include not overloading sockets and not leaving washing appliances on overnight.

As Alan Walmsley, assistant chief fire officer says, it is a tragedy when anyone dies. We must not become complacent.

But nor should we be reticent about singing the praises of what we have achieved over the years in making this society so much safer than it once was and saving so many lives.