Remarks by President McAleese at the launch of the Christmas 2010 Road Safety Campaign
Remarks by President McAleese at the launch of the Christmas 2010 Road Safety Campaign National Rehabilitation Hospital
Dia dhíbh a chairde and thank you to the Road Safety Authority for inviting me to the launch of the 2010 Christmas road safety campaign. We are all here because we hope that this campaign will save lives. Since I spoke here last year 227 people lost their lives on our roads. Every single one of them could be and should be alive today. They should be with their families looking forward to Christmas. Instead sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, friends and colleagues are carrying a grief that just goes on and on. Every one of them has something to say about this campaign and it is – please listen, please take road safety really seriously, please do not create any more victims.
This year some people listened so well that the number of deaths was reduced by 24 people. That is twenty-four families who will not face an empty seat at the dinner table this Christmas, because we made better, more educated and more responsible decisions when using the roads. In short, because we consciously and conscientiously took more care but still not enough to stop the carnage. Now we have to try harder for though we prefer not to face it, life is fragile and the human body is fragile. It was not built to withstand the massive forces that are involved in a collision. We use the roads so much that somehow we seem to have lost sight of the fact that it is intrinsically dangerous, that in a split second things can go badly wrong and when they do, people die or get really badly injured. In the last five years alone 1,821 have had their lives snuffed out and over four thousand more people have been left maimed, paralysed or suffering an acquired brain injury. That is like saying that everyone in Monaghan, or Thurles or Youghal has been killed or seriously injured. And the consequences do not end with those grim statistics. The grief of those left behind is awful. The changed lives, the diminished lives of the injured is awful. The waste, the unnecessary, avoidable, stupid waste is awful.
Ask anybody in this hospital. The staff and patients here do their best to rebuild shattered lives and health. Modern medical and rehabilitation treatments can sometimes even work wonders but they shouldn’t have to, and the truth is that the accident that happens in a couple of seconds often has dreadful consequences that last a lifetime.
The Road Safety Authority’s campaign is letting the voices of those who know those consequences intimately tell us their story. They have lived the nightmare. And they are telling it to us so that we will be safe and make others safe on our roads. We are very grateful to them for enduring such a harrowing retelling of all they have suffered. We owe it to the injured, the dead and the grieving to listen and to learn – so that we change our behaviour on the road, reduce the dying, reduce the carnage.
I pay a special tribute to the men and women who work right on this front line, An Garda Síochána, the Fire Service, the Ambulance Service, the healthcare personnel, the carers – everyone of them praying for a joyful and happy Christmas season free from road deaths and injuries. I thank the agencies and organisations dedicated to road safety – the Road Safety Authority, the National Roads Authority, the Medical Bureau of Road Safety, the Local Authorities, and voluntary groups who have made this work their vocation.
I wish everyone a safe and peaceful Christmas and New Year. Please drive safely, walk safely, cycle safely. Please think about safety deeply and responsibly. Let that be our Christmas gift to one another.
It costs nothing but it could be the most valuable gift we will ever give or receive.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.