COMMENT: A waste of young life on the road to Killarney
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Wednesday September 01 2010
THE scale of Wednesday's fatality outside Barraduff is shocking: four young lives cut down in their prime in the single-worst car accident in the county since Easter 1995. As much as any county, Kerry has had to deal with the aftermath of road fatalities over the years. Sadly, the refrain has become all too familiar as lives are lost and communities rally around stricken families to console them through the burial process.
This week's horrific tragedy was of a different order altogether, however, as the county reeled in shock when it learned on Wednesday that four lives — those of David and Kevin Breen, Áine Riordan and Brian Coffey — had been claimed on a Wednesday morning on a road outside Barraduff. For the families, the fallout is scarcely imaginable as they begin the process of coming to terms with what has happened.
For the greater community, the fallout is less painful, of course, but every bit as important if we are to learn anything from the general circumstances of their demise.
Pending the results of the garda investigation there can be no certainty as to what caused the accident. However, the facts speak for themselves as the most heartbreaking aspect of the tragedy is examined: their young years.
Youth is a common denominator of road fatalities the length and breadth of the country. The biggest loss of life in a single accident prior to this week's carnage in Kerry was the unspeakable death of eight young people in Donegal in July.
Beside these stand-out incidents are hundreds of fatalities each year in which the drivers simply did not have any significant experience behind the wheel by dint of their age.
The success of campaigns by the Road Safety Authority and the Garda Síochána in recent years have very clearly borne fruit as the number of deaths on Irish roads declines.
But it is clear the message is simply not getting across to many young people and this is not only glimpsed in a perusal of road death statistics. Early this summer, a group of boy racers were interviewed by gardaí after they posted video on Youtube of reckless stunts on public roads in Tipperary and some months later this paper spoke to an eyewitness of a shocking boy racer ' cruise' at Banna; anecdotal evidence of an existing culture that refuses to go away.
It is therefore absolutely vital, while we consider remedies such as speed limiters and other legal deterrents to speed, that our education system take a more practical approach to the lives of its charges and introduce a substantial programme on motoring from as early as is feasbile if the message is to begin hitting home.
