South Meath Driving School

According to shocking new figures released by the Road Safety Authority (RSA), in the first six months of 2012, 23% of drivers killed and 29% of passengers killed were not wearing seatbelts at the time of the collision. The information is based on preliminary data supplied by An Garda Síochána. A worrying feature is the number of people who were not wearing a seatbelt and who were ejected from the vehicle.

The real tragedy behind these figures is that some of these deaths may well have been prevented if the driver or passenger had been wearing their seatbelt. Wearing a seatbelt significantly increases your chance of survival and can reduce the severity of your injuries if involved in a collision. According to the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) in the UK around 2 out of 3 people will survive or have less serious injuries if they are wearing a seat belt

Mr. Noel Brett, Chief Executive, RSA said, “Putting on a seatbelt only takes a few seconds and it’s something we do automatically. Despite this, and the fact that the overwhelming majority of people in this country wear a seatbelt, we have an overall wearing rate of 95%, there is a minority who are willing to put their lives at risk by not wearing one. Why? Is it because they believe it’s their personal choice, they just can’t be bothered or perhaps they think they look cool in front of their friends?”

Mr. Brett concluded, “While not wearing a seatbelt is not cool, it is a selfish act, neither is it a matter of personal choice. If you do not wear a seatbelt you become a potential killer in a crash. You will be thrown around the inside of a car, possibly seriously injuring or killing other occupants in the car. Quite simply, without a seatbelt you’re a killer.”

By not wearing a seatbelt you are not just risking your life and that of others, you are breaking the law. You must wear a seatbelt if one is fitted.

If you don’t wear a seatbelt you risk a fine of €80 and two penalty points, which remain on your licence for three years. Passengers over 17 can be fined €80 for not wearing a seatbelt.

The Gardaí are issuing an average of 1,300 Fixed Charged Notices each month in 2012 to drivers for seatbelt offences. They issued almost 16,000 notices for seatbelt offences in 2011.

Previous RSA research indicated that males account for 4 out of 5 road deaths where no seatbelt is being used and that young men are four and a half times more likely not to be wearing a seatbelt in a fatal collision (Collision Facts 1998 to 2003).

According to the 2010 Road Collision Facts, published by the RSA (the last year we have comprehensive data) 16% of drivers and 41% of passengers killed were not wearing seat belts.

Belt up. Be safe. You can always get into a good habit but you can never get out of a brown habit. (For the information of our younger generation, that’s the wearing apparel of the dead.)

The things that young people get up to can be as fascinating as it is exasperating. It’s still great to be young and not telling your mother everything; no need ‘cause she mostly finds out, one way or another.

Some of the older folk, yeah, those past the half century mark, might remember the sponsored fifteen minute programmes on Radio Eireann. One such was Walton’s, at the end of which the broadcaster went, ‘… and if you feel like singing, do sing an Irish song, the songs our fathers loved.’

The Waltons often featured the great tenor, John McCormack singing the lovely folk song, ‘When You and I were Young, Maggie.’

The lyrics of the song were written by a Canadian schoolteacher, George Johnson many moons ago. Margaret ‘Maggie’ Clarke was his pupil. They fell in love and George walked to the Niagra Falls and composed the poem. The tone is melancholy and consolation over lost youth rather than fear of  aging. They were married in 1864 but Maggie’s health failed and she died the following year, while the good man lived on for a further fifty years.

And, yes, youth must have its fling. The fling might incorporate things like wild oats, booze, reefers, or just crazy cars. The experience of what happened in Donegal a few years back shocked the country and beyond, when six or seven people were killed in one horrific crash. Young lads had been playing ‘chicken’ among other games with the lethal weapon that is the motorcar.

A young fellow buys an old car for about 700 euro, most likely. It’s moribund but after a few weeks there’s a complete transformation.

Apart from  an eye-catching respray, there’s much modification with big bore exhausts and stereos; spoilers and bonnet scoops; there’s suspension modifications to lower the occupants height. There’s body kits and neon lights. Tinted windows restrict the view from within and without.

That’s more or less cosmetic. This car has to be seen to go. So, a 1.3 litre engine comes out and is replaced by a 2.0 litre. A new set of alloy wheels and stretch tyres has it ready for off. Green lenses have replaced rear lights and brakes. Impressive. Oh, and the discs on the windscreen are not a priority as this machine is not for the High Street, particularly. It just might be insured. Well, only at shady times of the day will it venture off course. Up to 2,000.00 euro may have been spent on the beast at this stage. The horse is now a cheetah.

There are exciting ‘track’ days ahead. Off to the meeting place. There’s another three or four contenders waiting. The rap, rap from the speakers set the tone. Doughnuts for a start. Round and round she goes in 2^nd gear, pedal to the floor, handbrake three quarters applied, wheels spinning, smoke rising, breathing rubber. One at a time they line out for their parish, each trying to outperform the other. To achieve this, a passenger half climbs out the window, feet hanging inside and holds on heroically in the cauldron of this dustbowl.

If there’s a tread left, a road race starts. These are narrow, rural backwaters, though in use by the public. Two cars abreast at full throttle. Someone ends up in a drain. There’s great fun getting towed out the next day. There’s a rush of adrenalin even recalling their exploits.  Inevitably, sometimes there’s serious injury, even fatalities.

Education is key to eradicating such behaviour. It has worked well in the far North West. Inculcate the right attitude in the classroom and there’s a high probability that temptation will be resisted.

Not every young lad or lass hankers with such escapades; nor do all who spruce – up their car as stated. There’s the car ‘enthusiast’ who just likes to show off his wares in a more civil manner, cruising around slowly, except for the ear-bursting noise of the twin exhausts at take-off time from traffic lights. He’s just more irritating than dangerous and can attract a pretty lady in the process.

Changing the make-up of a car in any substantial way alters that car to the extent that insurance cover is negatived. Bad enough being caught by the law for the infringement, but it’s in the event of a crash that the enhancement of a suspension or ‘upgrading’ of the engine may result in, literally, not having the vehicle insured. Insurance companies insist that any material alteration must be reported to them. That will certainly mean a further premium or even cancellation.

A NCT test will also result in failure.

Mammy, when the young fella spends too many winter nights in the garage he may not be simply repairing your boiler, rather he might be creating a monster for the family.

By law, a learner driver must be accompanied by a fully qualified driver of at least two years standing and must also display an ‘L’ plate front and rear.

In a recent Garda survey throughout the country, it was discovered that compliance was not far short of 50%. Some 2,200 drivers were checked and 946 (43%) were unaccompanied by a full licence holder and 660 (c. 30%) did not display ‘L’ plates. Many offended in both categories. With summer upon us, the Gardai have made it known that there will be higher vigilance in the areas of speeding, drink and drug driving, non use of seat belts and the chestnut cracker of a mobile phone to the ear.

Yet, the law is not heavy-handed with young people and most will suffer a Caution if certain conditions apply.

Every young person setting out on  their driving mission should be taken to a morgue and made view the body of a crash victim – young, innocent, loving, invincible, with his family members standing there, numb.

Then, they should have on their driving syllabus the contents of a family impact statement like that of Margaret Sheehan which was read out at Cork Circuit Court recently. The judge said that it should be compulsory reading for all drivers. It read, in part –

‘There are places and moments in time that we all for one reason or another will never forget. Standing in the morgue in Cork City that morning the situation became a reality. The words and whispers that had been following us around for the previous few hours were now real. Our beautiful son  … was gone from us. Lying still, cold and lifeless in front of us, covered in a single white sheet – he lay silent in a world completely at odds with that in which his family stood.’

And there’s much more words of free-flowing expression from that mother’s grieving heart.

Nobody wants to be reminded, especially those who live the loss, and they are many. I am not saying that young drivers are responsible for all the worst situations out there. No, but we can’t get away from the cold fact that the record shows, that of all fatal crashes in any recent year, up to one third involved a driver between 17 and 25 years.

Learning to drive comes easy to most young people. With tuition, almost all become competent. As I emphasise to those who have progressed in the short few months, it then takes a few years to acquire the wisdom of the road. Apprenticeship is defined as a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a structured competency-based set of skills. Whether it be a bricklayer, a thatcher or a solicitor, each must go through the learning process for which there is no quick fix. Hence, a period of apprenticeship.

It’s the same for the learner driver who must be patient and, as a sage from Cavan once advised, ‘Progress slowly.’ Noel Brett and Traffic Commissioner O’Mahoney continually harp on that those recently invoked laws are there to provide a high standard of training for the novice and to protect them from the lurking harm that’s out there. Other drivers are immediately made aware, by means of the display of an ‘L’ plate, that such driver is in the learning process and may need extra space and a little protection from the hum and hassle that is a busy thoroughfare. Yes, there are those who may show little respect for a Learner Driver, perhaps that’s part of learning the trade: the world and her mother can’t go half fast enough for certain people.

Parents should advise their child of the intricacies of car insurance. Read the terms over carefully and, maybe, consult your broker. For, it should be noted that where a learner driver who is not complying with the terms of such licence and is involved in an accident, that driver is covered for third party liability, but their insurance provider may not cover any other costs and may seek to recover costs relative to the non compliance.

Overall, road deaths are down on last year which is great news. April, though, saw an increase of ten deaths on 2011. If you are a young driver, don’t invite your mother to compile a victim impact statement. It will kill her.

The Essential Driver Training (EDT) programme is being reviewed by the Road Safety Authority at present and Driving Instructors have an opportunity to express their views on many aspects of how they rate the format and syllabus. When the programme was introduced just over one year ago (making it compulsory to take 12 driving lessons before applying for a Test) much reservation was expressed by Instructors and their representatives regarding the lack of consultation or approach in the drawing up of EDT. Students who underwent training over the past year will be familiar with the Lessons procedure and especially Lesson 2 which involves cornering, changing lanes, use of slip roads, negotiating roundabouts etc. Such challenge probably wasn’t intended  for the faint-hearted beginner.

The issue of the Sponsor has also presented its own problems. It is argued that having a parent or friend assisting with practice sessions between lessons only caused confusion for a learner and my contention there is that a Sponsor should be introduced only after five or six lessons with an Instructor. In fairness to the RSA, it was a vast leap from a few years back when there was no regulation for training and no defined standard for the Driving Test, so teething problems could be expected.

Students who are now undergoing driving lessons have been left in a twilight zone as regards when they might apply for a Driving Test. Where six or eight of the twelve lessons were completed, a minority have been applying to Ballina and in some cases were given a Test date. Now the official position with the RSA is that such students may apply for a Test, but, they will not be given an appointment date until the Driving Instructor has made a logbook return of the final lesson. Therefore, all lessons must be complete prior to getting a Test date. Of course, too, six months must have elapsed between the date of issue of one’s first Learner Permit and sitting the Test.

Even in gloomy times, there’s always good news. The ‘Go Safe’ traffic camera vans are credited with cutting the hourly speeding detection rate at accident blackspots by a whopping 93%. When the ‘Go Safe’ vans were launched, the detection rate was 14 per hour and now it’s just 1 per hour.

We are responding to the many road safety campaigns that hit the air waves during the year. Ten years ago, the deadliest hours for road fatalities was between 12mn and 4am, Friday to Sunday. However, for the past two years, most fatalities occurred between 3pm and 7pm on Thursdays and Fridays. In 1996, the majority of arrests for drink driving happened between 6pm and 12mn, whereas, of late, most such arrests are between 6.00am and noon, which is apparently related to the previous night’s drinking. So, getting a taxi home from the pub at midnight won’t necessarily save your bacon if there’s an early drive to do the next morning. Keep in mind that it takes two hours per unit of alcohol ( i.e. one glass of beer ) to clear the system.

Ireland now ranks third in the EU in terms of fatal accidents per capita coming in after Sweden and the UK. Last year was the first since records began in 1959 that fatalities were under 200. As of now we are 12 deaths less than last year, so, we are going in the right direction.

There’s no getting away, though, from the fact that the young male driver still poses a serious threat to road safety. About 25% of all road fatalities involve male drivers under 25 years. On the other hand, 20% of pedestrian fatalities involve people over 65. Excessive speed is a factor in more than half of accidents. The use of mobile phones while driving continues apace with over 33,000 convictions last year.

Now that the EDT programme is in full swing, youngsters have the benefit of professional training and, with a good attitude, road deaths and serious injury can be halved again in the next five years.

Close to Tralee is the rural parish of Abbeydorney where one Michael Buckley was born over ninety  years ago. In time, he took over the family farm and married Breda. Land was in the blood for generations and Michael knew the ins and outs of the scene from a young age.

In his spare time, Michael pursued the game of the smaller ball in his younger days, hurling for the Kilflynn Club and, in 1957, landed a North Kerry Senior Championship and added another later on.

The children began to arrive and, to any unassuming Abbeydorney or Knocknagoshel man, the Buckleys were a chip of the old block, set in their ways as tradition would have it. Not exactly, mind you, as there was a latent streak of the Tom Creans lurching in this Mike fellow.

He had observed the  hardships endured by farmers engaged in bringing cattle to fairs at crossroads and market squares and the thousand year old method of buying and selling, or, maybe, not selling at all on the day. Michael was a founder member of Tralee Mart, Cork Marts and FBD Insurance for the farming community.

He looked at his own farm, probably with the same jaundiced eye as Kavanagh when he penned the lines, ‘… They said

That I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges

Of the little farm and did not know the world …’

Soon he was talking to the local Land Commission officer with a view to moving to greener pastures, though now in his early 40’s. Mick and Breda found themselves viewing farms in Straffan, Beaupark,  and Trim. Being forward-thinking people, it was easy settling for the Navan Road, Trim, for its proximity to the town and a good choice of schools.

When Mick told his neighbours of his plans they told him he was mad; he was moving kit and kin. The decision was made and there was no time for tears before, during or after the big move. It was grist to the mill. Cattle, a farm horse and all the farm implements were transported from Kerry in lorries. Michael, accompanied by Breda and their three small children, drove their new Ford Anglia car – Reg. No. FIN-756 and priced at £350.00 – all the way to Trim, a distance of nearly 200 miles. They arrived on the evening of the 26^th of March, 1965, almost fifty years ago. It was in its own right, somehow, comparable to the brave men and women who, in the 1840s onwards, took the Oregon and California Trails West, except that the Buckleys didn’t raft down the Boyne on their run-in to their newest conquest. For this family, it was a monstrous undertaking, a once in a lifetime move that was near irreversible.

At that time, other families from the kingdom also arrived, like the Gouldings, Brosnans and Foleys; they attracted the attention of Telefis Eireann whose News crew interviewed them about their great venture North. Word has it that Buckley was, there and then, offered a job in the RTE Newsroom.

But, it was no soft  landing for those trekkers. While they had a new house to move in to, there was no electricity for Breda for some months to come. Mick embarked on building outhouses and sheds and there were new farming systems to be learned. For, it should be known that Kerry has a climate that’s more akin to the Mediterranean than that of these parts. Well, slightly, they say they are a month ahead of the North-East with their crops and in their first year here a late April frost was a setback to Mick’s early plantings.

In their first years in Trim, Breda’s uncles and cousins arrived from Kerry to assist with the crops and out-buildings, staying a few weeks at a time in the process. Between their ‘foreign’ accents and demands for pints of Single X porter, Marcie Regan is reported to have been at a rare disadvantage.

If neighbourliness was as regular as tea making in Kerry, so the new arrivals found it likewise in their new found land where the likes of Dick Fitzsimons, Paddy Browne and Major Thompson were always on hand to give advice and good counsel.

Trim was a small town in the mid 60’s, but Buckley was soon expanding. He rented land near Navangate and, it was a common sight to see cattle being walked the short mile in and out the Navan Road to this land. Incidentally, Griffin Park was later built on that pasture.

It was common then to have cattle tended in the heart of a town and it isn’t so long since James Brogan and his late father, Michael, were milking cows in the yard of Brogan’s Hotel; Jim Taafe did likewise on Haggard St. And, it seems only like yesterday that Betty McEvoy walked her cattle out the Dublin Road, with bales of hay stacked on her bicycle, to her farm at Maudlins. All a pretty sight.

Buckleys new house was the only one on the Navan Road between Davis’ and  Phil McArdle’s. Whether in the name of progress, all that has changed meanwhile.

Michael and Breda took their skills to Trim golf course at an early stage and his good self didn’t sacrifice all his small ball skills to Kilflynn for, in 1975, he almost stole the show on Captain’s Day when he came in second. Breda revealed a little secret about a record that Michael holds in the Kingdom, or maybe, on this little planet. They were back down there on holidays, playing golf. Mick hit a notorious drive off the 18^th tee. His ball went out of sight in the direction of the car park where Breda was gearing up for home: it landed in the boot of the Anglia and wasn’t recovered until they arrived in Trim – which has to be the longest drive not on record!

Michael loved Wednesdays and Dad’s Army outings at Newtownmoynagh in his latter playing days close to his 90^th birthday. While his fleety foot may have deserted him, his astute brain retains all the alacrity of a young fellow.

Breda drives the family car as ever while Michael quit five years ago. As I teach young people, like their grandson, David, to drive, I exhort them to adopt all the good habits at an early stage as they will stand them in good stead for 70 or even 80 years duration. They might chuckle at such a thought, but, isn’t the old master from Abbeydorney living proof. And, don’t wager too much on not seeing him make his way towards Newtownmoynagh in a grey Anglia some sunny Wednesday morn.

He says his Autumn years have fallen fast upon him recently and he misses the work in the fields and just pottering about the house. He knows, too, his many blessings in his children and grandchildren and, most of all, the brightest ray of sunshine through his good wife.

Michael took the Ralph Emerson way in life –

‘Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.’