The stricken, young face of Victor Teggart made it onto the front pages on Wednesday. An honest, hard-working, 27-year-old lorry driver, he could have been any mother's son.

The wan features of 23-year-old Alessandro Antonelli also made it into the news that day, evidence of a belated public convulsion about deaths on Irish roads and "proof" that young men will be the death of us all.

Between them this week, these two young men from outside the State carried the burden of Ireland's white-hot, freshly-hewn, Damascene conversion to the principles of road safety. Charged with dangerous driving leading to the deaths of five people, two little boys, two young sisters, a father of two and - in Antonelli's case - a mother of three, they made exemplary scapegoats.

Now who will be held accountable for the other 309 road deaths so far this year?

Here is one driver's log of an evening's driving around Dublin city on the day that young Victor Teggart's picture made the front pages.

Dublin city centre, 6.30 p.m. Cars get the green light to cross O'Connell Bridge. Suddenly, a male pedestrian steps out and slowly, defiantly, limps across the road, swiftly followed by a surge of pedestrians. As drivers try to negotiate a way through, a well-dressed, 30-something male pedestrian leans across a windscreen, jabs two fingers at the woman driver and bellows "Fuck you!" There is no policeman in sight.

Same evening, 9.30. The south quays near the Virgin Megastore, right-hand lane. A large Volvo suddenly pulls out of a parking space. I honk the horn and stand on the brakes, thereby averting a collision.

My reward? That two-finger sign again, from a 50-something male. Still no policeman in sight.

Same evening, 9.40. Travelling between Thomas Street and Inchicore, observing what I presume to be a 30-mile speed limit. A lorry is hugging the rear bumper of my car, lights flashing. Suddenly, he veers around me, crossing the solid white line, and flashes that old two-finger sign as he passes.

Still no policeman in sight.

Same evening, 9.55. The Naas dual-carriageway, festooned as usual with traffic lights, road works and warning signs about police cameras and speed ramps. By now, it is pitch dark. Given the lengthy, unlit sections, heartstoppingly uneven surfaces and misleading road markings, it makes sense to observe the 40 m.p.h. limit. No one does; they're barrelling along at well over 60. Without a ramp or camera in sight, never mind a real live policeman.

Farther on at Kill, we note the continued retention of the right-turn for the Ambassador Hotel from the Dublin-bound side, despite a plethora of serious accidents - one of which left one young girl in a coma, another in a wheelchair - and despite the existence of another right-turn for the village just up the road.

In daytime, anyone turning off for the back roads of Kildare - and other counties, no doubt - must gird themselves for the manic storm of lorries hurtling back and forth from yet another new housing development being built off roads hardly wide enough for a horse and carriage, but soon to unleash another 200 cars into the maelstrom. That's another 200 cars all battling to make it out of their rural estates and tiny roads onto the main thoroughfares, at the same time every morning.

Parents already terrified about allowing their children to walk or cycle to school will finally surrender and bring them by car - thereby trebling the mayhem and triggering Ministerial ochoning about unfit, Irish children and their indulgent parents.

Villages will plead for speed limit signs and get them, then wonder why they bothered when it comes to legal enforcement. Meanwhile, as sure as night follows day, police speed traps will continue to adorn the Lucan/Chapelizod/Naas/Portlaoise by-passes - comparatively safe dual-carriageways, but ideal for the kind of turkey shoots that result in judicial grandstanding by way of spectacular penalties in the courts as well as impressive enforcement statistics for the Garda.

This despite US research showing that the chances of being killed on a rural two-lane road are 80 per cent higher than on an urban interstate freeway - a fact some European countries, at least, have noted.

On his first day in France this summer, a Sunday morning, one Irishman was pulled over for exceeding the 70km/h limit on a two-lane country road (equivalent to about 55 m.p.h. on a road of better quality than many of our main stretches) and fined 600 francs on the spot. He took it on the chin and took care not to reoffend on French territory.

Now consider the plight of a French tourist in Ireland, faced with such quaint customs as putting our road distance signs in kilometres (though not always, of course) and our speed limit signs in miles. And it is not only foreigners who every day in every town in Ireland cause virtual pile-ups due to poor sign-posting.

Try finding the Dublin road out of downtown Carlow, to start with. Or even something as basic as a French-type roadsign, advising frustrated drivers that there's an overtaking lane not far ahead.

But these elements in the debate rarely get a look-in. In recent weeks, public angst has focused on the 327,000 Irish drivers operating on provisional licences. Yet no research has been done to discover whether these drivers are disproportionately represented in the accident statistics.

And anyway, driver skill is by no means a guarantee of safe driving. Indeed, increased skill is usually used to get into more risky situations, according to research by General Motors.

"The group of drivers with the quickest reaction, the best visual acuity and the best knowledge about and interest in motor vehicles is also the group with the highest crash risk, namely young males," says GM's Dr Leonard Evans.

We can safely assume, however, that the 42 per cent of trucks that breached the Irish inter-urban limit of 50 m.p.h. (a ludicrously high speed on two lane roads to begin with, often accomplished with a mobile phone in one hand) in March weren't all driven by young men on provisional licences. Nor the 28 per cent of cars that exceeded the limits in July.

In a week when the nation held up two young, out-of-state drivers as icons of driving folly, it it worth restating the findings of a recent PMPA survey, an eloquent snapshot of the staggering stupidity that pervades Irish driving habits.

In this, a third of those questioned admitted to overtaking after crossing a continuous white line; one in five had broken a red light; one in 10 had overtaken on a bend; and three in a hundred had fallen asleep at the wheel. Any one of these people must have examined the face of young Victor Teggart this week and thought: "There but for the grace of God . . ."

The point is that if there is a culture of ignorance, stupidity and murderous aggressiveness on Irish roads, it is clearly not confined to young men. It has filtered down through decades of official negligence and handy, stop-start, attention-getters such as the drink-driving campaigns.

Government Ministers have rejected suggestions that the death toll is running out of control, claiming that the number is nowhere near the 600-plus figure of the 1970s. But that, surely, is to ignore the fact that medical treatment has become more sophisticated and better able to keep people alive.

At least five major trauma cases a week (i.e., serious head injuries and/or associated multiple trauma) are admitted to Beaumont Hospital as a result of road accidents, with all the catastrophic implications of such injuries, not to mention the drain on hard-pressed national surgical and nursing resources.

Meanwhile, bewildered citizens scrabble around for solutions: speed-limiting devices; hugely increased fines; a bureau with a 999type number to which offenders could be reported.

And behind it all are the injured and the maimed and the hearts that will never mend. One of the saddest calls to a radio show in recent times referred to the widely-reported accident in which the 17-year-old son of golfer Christy O'Connor was killed. The caller felt we needed reminding that another man was killed in that same accident.

Michael Hynes was from Miltown Malbay, was just 52 and a good father to his four children, including two step-children. His death has left Ann Hynes a widow for a second time.