Imagine you were elected into government and you were put in charge of everything to do with the roads. Your task is to do anything you can to reduce road deaths, reduce the amount of accidents and generally improve the quality of driving on our roads, what would you do?

There is so much coverage about road safety, speeding and drink driving, but really I think that as a country we are just terrible drivers compared to other nations. If it was up to me I would do the following:

• The driving test / learning to drive needs a compete overhaul. Needs to be far more thorough and practical. Everyone should have to retake their text every 10 or maybe even 5 years. The amount of old grannies on the roads who passed their text 40 years ago and have no real idea of the rules of the road is atrocious.
• Education is the key. If we educated everyone to be far better drivers, we would have a lot less accidents and deaths. Everyone should be at the standard of the “Advanced Driving Test”, know how to control a car in an accident situation and generally know the limits of their vehicle.
• The Gardai should become “Road Police” and constantly be on the lookout for any bad driving and pull over the person, explain what they did wrong and possibly give a small fine etc. If they obviously show a lack of ability they should be forced to take more driving lessons or take their test again.
• This could be taken one step further and a phone line should be set up so you can report bad drivers. Very quickly the really bad ones would get lots of complaints and they should be forced to get up to a certain standard or get off the roads.
• Speed cameras/traps in accident black spots only, or places where it is obviously unsafe to drive quickly.
  It should become more acceptable to let bad drivers know they are in the wrong. Flashing or even beeping at people in the incorrect lane on a motorway should not be seen as rude. A very slow driver should be taken off the road as they are simply not competent to be on the roads. Bad drivers actually Cause accidents when others do stupid things to get past them. This needs to be eliminated.

I just think we should forget this “Scare people into safer driving” and instead properly educate everyone to be better drivers, that is what will increase safety and decrease deaths. Speeding is not the only cause of accidents, its going faster than the ability of the car and the driver that causes problems. I also think that underpowered cars are pure dangerous. I drive a powerful car – 220bhp. If I find myself in a tight situation I have the ability to accelerate out of it, and I also have very powerful brakes so my stopping distance is considerably shorter than the average car. I drove a 1 Litre car the other day and honestly felt unsafe driving it due to the lack of power and terrible brakes. You can’t tell people not to drive Micra’s, but they should be aware how their driving can be affected.

In other countries (Germany I think) you have to have a minimum of 40 hours of instructor led training before you are allowed to drive at all. They take their driving a lot more seriously and even take better care of their cars! It really shows. We need to take more of an approach like this.

Why the government can’t take steps like this to improve driving is beyond me, instead blamestorming on speeding and young drivers, and trying to collect as much money as possible from cherry picking speeding in areas where it should not be an issue.