Most basic form of road safety

AFTER a welcome good month of October, weatherwise, and with the mid-term break for schools coming up, many people will be looking to get away for this holiday weekend, so the roads will be busier and extra care will be needed.

Road fatalities up to last Monday were down by 25 over the same period last year, but there were still 126 people killed, which has brought far too much grief for so many families. The change of clocks to winter time this weekend will see darker evenings and, no doubt, seasonal bad weather will follow anon, so even greater care will be needed on the roads.

This October bank holiday weekend, An Garda Siochana is staging a safety belt enforcement campaign, the use of which it describes as ‘the most basic form of road safety.’ Indeed, it was alarming to read this week that one-third of vehicular fatalities in 2015 were not wearing a safety belt at the time of the collision – that’s more than 40 people, many of whom could possibly still be alive today.

Then, there are all those people who survive collisions, but sustain injuries that may have been avoidable or not as serious had they been wearing safety belts. If they are incapacitated by injuries, they come a lifelong burden on their families, which is nearly as bad as the sad legacy families of people killed in road traffic collisions are left with.

Holiday weekends are times for us to relax and unwind, so belt up and stay safe!