Byrne appeals to drivers after road deaths
The chairman of the Road Safety Authority renewed his appeal for drivers to take care on the roads today – one of the busiest motoring days of the year.
Veteran broadcaster Gay Byrne admitted he felt powerless after six fatalities over the Easter weekend brought the total number of road deaths in the Republic in 2006 to 123.
“One can only have a sense of frustration and anger and helplessness that such deaths continue on the road,” he said.
“Today, of course, is one of the busiest days of the year with people flooding from all over the country back to where they came from and you can only make the same appeal to everybody, which is the appeal I made on Thursday at the beginning of the Bank Holiday weekend.
“For example, whatever speed you find you’re doing on the road, back off by 5km per hour. Just do that and don’t think about it and don’t question it, just back off whatever speed you’re doing and slacken off by 5km per hour.
“And then in addition to that, try to do something courteous or mannerly with other road users and try very hard to relax and take it easy while still being vigilant.”
He added: “Unfortunately, all the warnings and all the dreadful, harrowing television commercials and radio commercials and photographs in the newspapers down through the last few years, apparently there are a great number of people who just don’t read newspapers, don’t watch television, don’t listen to radio and don’t pay them any heed and so it goes on. It’s appalling.”
In the latest incident, a 40-year-old male motorcyclist died on the N67 around 2km outside Belturbet in Co Cavan last night following a collision with a car.
It was the 10th death on the roads on both sides of the Irish border over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.
Four Polish men died instantly when the car they were travelling in smashed head-on into a truck on a road outside Bandon, Co Cork, on Friday night.
They were Sylwester Szezyrow, 25, Radoslaw Nowak, 23, Rafal Corski, 28, and Andrzej Wojciechowski, 27, who had been living in Ballincollig, Co Cork. The lorry driver was treated for minor injuries.
Elsewhere, a man in his mid-20s who died when the car he was driving collided with two stray horses on a road outside Navan, Co Meath, on Saturday morning, was named as 26-year-old Martin Coen, from Lacken, Kilmihill, Clare.
The crash happened at Garlow Cross at about 6am. Both animals also died at the scene.
In the north, a 19-year-old woman died in hospital following a road crash in Co Tyrone on Saturday night. Janeen Black from Aughafad Road, Pomeroy, was fatally injured in a two-car collision on the A5 Ballygawley to Aughnacloy road.
Three teenagers were killed in Castlereagh, on the outskirts of east Belfast, early on Saturday morning. Nineteen-year-old twin brothers and their friend, aged 18, all died in the single vehicle incident on the Ballygowan Road.
The weekend deaths bring to 123 the number of people killed on the roads since the beginning of the year. The equivalent figure in the North is 39.
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