Letter: All road users must pay proper attention if we want to cut down number of serious collisions
A letter from Martyn Boyd:
The number of killed and serious injury (KSI) collisions on our roads is far too high.
Every sensible person agrees with that. Seventy-three people lost their lives on our roads in 2023/24.
That’s also 73 devastated families and 73 diminished circles of friends.
The current PSNI road user awareness campaign is built on the fatal five main causes of KSI road collisions; speeding, drink/drug driving, failing to wear a seatbelt, mobile phone use and careless driving.
While these factors cause the most deadly harm, most people may not be aware that distracted and/or inattentive driving/riding is by far the greatest cause of road collisions of all severities.
The latest PSNI road collision report states that out of 3,188 total collisions of all types and severities in 2023/24, 832 were caused by drivers being distracted or inattentive, causing 1,312 injuries of which 126 were of the most serious or fatal category.
That’s 26% of all road collisions caused by drivers of all vehicles being distracted by mobile phones and other devices or simply not paying proper attention to the road.
This is evidenced every single day on the roads.
I am not alone in routinely seeing drivers using mobile phones in slow-moving traffic, on the approach to and sitting at road junctions, sitting at traffic lights and while driving.
I have even witnessed drivers reading papers while driving at speed.
From a motorcyclist's perspective, the inattentive driver is a great danger.
Slightly over 50% of KSI collisions involving motorcyclists are caused by other road users, mainly drivers and almost exclusively drivers who were inattentive, distracted or simply failed to observe the presence of a rider and pulled out in front of them, pulled across their path or simply drove into them.
Between 2015 and 2019 (the latest statistics available on this) that equals 231 motorcyclists killed or seriously injured by drivers over a five-year period.
Indeed, 31 of those were fatal collisions.
For the sake of motorcyclist safety, and the safety of every road user, I echo the calls by the PSNI and others for ALL road users to pay proper attention when using our roads and give care, consideration and courtesy to each other.
Martyn Boyd, Northern Ireland representative for Motorcycle Action Group UK