Road deaths and suicide: Ignoring Trauma

Almost 1,000 people die in road accidents and from suicide each year and yet there is no sense of crisis or urgency

The State's terrible road fatalities in Donegal over the weekend of 7-9 October are a reminder of the appalling needless loss of life in Ireland, to which the Government seems indifferent. About 400 people are killed on the roads every year. About 550 people die of suicide. Almost a thousand lost lives each year.

There are around 50 murders in Ireland every year, most committed in once-off (usually domestic) circumstances. And yet there are periodic "Operation (you name it)" initiatives by the Garda to combat it – one of the latest being "Operation Anvil" to end gangland killing, which it spectacularly has failed to do. No such high-profile initiatives to deal with the far more devastating phenomena of road deaths and suicides.

There are some obvious measures the State could take to deal with the problem of road fatalities. Among them are the following: end the practice of permitting people who have not passed a driving test to drive; disable cars from being driven over, say, 50 miles an hour; require cars here to be fitted with suppressors to prevent them being driven over a relatively low rate; introduce satellite technology to detect cars being driven over the speed limit, anywhere in the country (it is now possible to fit every car with a device whereby it would be possible to determine through satellite surveillance at what speed they are being driven, along what routes); institute immediately a special full-time traffic corps within An Garda Síochána to detect people driving who have consumed any alcohol; and ban for at least five years anybody found driving having taken alcohol.

A further measure would be to tighten up the driving test, whereby a high level of proficiency would be required before a license would be issued. And require everyone to undergo a driving test every five years.

If will be argued that such measures are excessive. But if, for instance, half the number of people killed on the roads every year were to be murdered, would similarly drastic measures not be instituted? What is different?

There is a prevailing mindset that there is a human right to drive cars where one likes and how one likes, subject only to what are deemed "reasonable" constraints. And by "reasonable" this mindset means the minimum. That won't do anymore. We have to take all effective means of stopping the road carnage, subject only to what are understood as genuine civil liberties. Curiously, not a single political party favours any drastic action to deal with road deaths – they talk of more education, more gardaí, even through we know that will not work.

Suicide is a more complex phenomenon but State action could do a lot to cut back the incidence of it and here education has a genuine relevance.

If we could inculcate in our culture a recognition that people at times undergo emotional and psychological upset and trauma and that at times the extent of such trauma requires assistance, we would have made substantial progress. Instead, there remains a stigma attached to such trauma and a belief, especially among boys and young men, that any acknowledgment of such upset is a weakness. This should be conveyed, as a matter of course, in our schools, but also by means of a vigorous promotional campaign.

But much more is required.

We also need adequate mental health services, which provide counseling, medication and, where necessary, hospital care, to people in need of such and provide this expeditiously. Instead, our mental health services are even more in tatters than the health services generally. The proportion of overall health expenditure devoted to mental health has dropped progressively over the past decade. In the exposition of priorities in health, the heads of our health services, Mary Harney and Brendan Drumm, don't even mention mental health.

The indifference to such major problems is a symptom of the frivolity of our politics, its distance for the real lives of people and from real issues.

VINCENT BROWNE