Road safety was barely discussed a generation ago. But after hundreds of needless deaths it is an important part of transition year, reports John Holden

If you couldn't surf, you wouldn't jump on a board, head out into the Atlantic and hope for the best. Yet some people start driving without proper training and expect to learn by experience. Even though cars have been a familiar part of life for a century, road safety is a relatively new concept, and many people have a blase attitude to driving.

"What is needed is a complete lifestyle change," says Eamon Brown, the county's road-safety officer. "Most people don't take road safety seriously. Young drivers are frequently to blame for dangerous driving, but there is also a rite-of-passage attitude among older people that allows bad driving among younger people to continue. I still hear adults saying things like 'we all used to do it when we were 17' or 'they'll grow out of it', which is a very dangerous and old-fashioned outlook."

More than 200 people have been killed on Co Donegal roads in the past decade. Bernadette Brennan, who co-ordinates transition year at Rosses Community School, in Dungloe, pioneered a programme that has spread to several other schools in Co Donegal and beyond. "I've had so many students who've either been in accidents or knew someone who had been in one. I had to do something. If they're not educated about the dangers, they are putting themselves at risk."

Road safety is taught at all of the county's secondary schools. So Brown, who is one of only three full-time road-safety officers in Ireland, brought the Axa Roadsafe Roadshow to Letterkenny this month. "It is essentially a drama about a night out for a 17-year-old called Seán," says Brown. "He gets into his new car and picks up his girlfriend. He decides to start showing off, by driving dangerously, and ends up in a crash where his girlfriend is killed. Victims of accidents also talk about their experiences. It is hard hitting, to say the least. But people need to understand how poor decisions on the road can affect them and their families."

The roadshow was attended by transition-year students from all second-level schools in Co Donegal, including Rosses Community School. "It was very scary," says Padraig McCallag, a 16-year-old student. "Not only do you get the victim's perspective, but you also get the perspective of the gardaí, firemen and doctors who are involved. In our driver-safety module in school we learned things like how the car works, the rules of the road and driver theory. But the roadshow really made us think about the consequences of bad driving."

Roisin Boyle, an 18-year-old in sixth year, lost her cousin 12 years ago in a crash outside her own house. "People need to understand how accidents can happen to anyone," she says. "My cousin was a passenger in the car on the day of the crash. His friend was driving. The car hit a tree straight on. Everyone in the car escaped unharmed except for my cousin. I've had my own car for about a year now. I learned how to drive when I was about 14. People start driving before they have been properly shown how a car works. All the young drivers in Donegal like speeding. It is generally the boys, but I know plenty of females who do it, too."

Students elsewhere have been learning about safer driving through the MosCar programme. Transition-year students from Pobalscoil Na Tríonóide, in Youghal, Co Cork, were shown a stripped-down car, to see how its engine works. They were then shown its safety features and told what to do in the event of a crash to reduce the potential for serious injury.

MosCar's creator, Michael Gleeson, believes education will be the key to improvements in road safety. "If you can instil the right things in the minds of teenagers before they start to drive, then we'll be able to reduce the number of road deaths," he says. "We've been in a third of all the secondary schools in Ireland since we started. These days there could be 30 cars in the car park of a second-level school, and it's hard to identify which are the teachers' and which are the students'. So road safety has never been more important."

"It's really interesting for me," says Bronagh Shuel, who is 15, "because I've never driven, and I didn't know the first thing about cars before. Young drivers don't care about safety, but there are so many things to know that could help save your life."

Brian O'Halloran, a 16-year-old student, has driven in fields but never on the road. "So many young people around my area are crazy drivers," he says. "Lads would always be inclined to drive too fast, because of peer pressure. But if you don't learn the basics first you will end up with unsafe habits, like not wearing a seat belt. In MosCar you're shown exactly what would happen to you in a crash if you weren't wearing a belt. We were given a sheet explaining what happens in the car every tenth of a second. After just 0.2 of a second your knees would be crushed. At 0.6 the driver's head would go through the windscreen."

If informing young people about the dangers of driving is as important to reducing road deaths as we are led to believe, then the future could be bright. Individual TY teachers, as well as larger groups, such as the Road Safety Authority, are putting initiatives together all over Ireland. But Eamon Brown believes believes there is still a long road in front of us. "Road safety is still in its infancy, which is amazing when you think about how long we've lived with the motor car."

The AXA Roadsafe Roadshow is at the Helix, Dublin, next Tuesday

A local strategy for tackling a global problem

Last year the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a report on young drivers' behaviour in 30 countries.

Young Drivers: The Road to Safety found that 16- to 24-year-olds were "greatly over-represented in crash and traffic-fatality statistics". Crashes were the biggest killer of 15- to 24-year-olds in all of the countries studied.

The report estimated that more than 8,500 young drivers were killed in OECD countries in 2004, including 4,000 in the US, 750 in Germany, 645 in France and more than 300 in Japan and Spain. Mortality rates for young men were consistently higher than those for young women. The study also found that the younger people are when they start driving on their own and without restrictions, the more likely they are to have fatal accidents, particularly before they are 18.

Why so many deaths among young people? The biggest problem, according to the report, is inexperience. That sounds like a bit of a chicken-and-egg dilemma: surely the only way people can learn to drive is by practising.

The OECD found that more training before people start driving, with a particular focus on safety issues that have been seen to affect young drivers - speed, alcohol, seat belts, drugs - results in fewer fatalities.

Aside from awareness and practice, the report suggests that inexperience can cause young drivers to be too carefree. "Because serious crashes are relatively rare events, new drivers are not provided with the sort of negative feedback that might induce them to drive more carefully," it says. "They might also be motivated to arrive at a destination as quickly as possible, as well as by other factors, such as peer pressure or a desire to show off.

So taking driving lessons is not enough to keep you safe. The Axa Roadsafe Roadshow and other transition-year safety programmes will help create "drivers who are safe, and not just technically competent".

One of the most effective countermeasures suggested by the report is the introduction of a requirement for more accompanied practice before you get your licence. Michelle Magee of Rosses Community School, in Co Donegal, agrees. "Speeding and dangerous driving are definitely big problems," she says. "I would never risk anyone's life, and I think I'm a careful driver, but it doesn't make any sense to me that you can fail your test and still drive home afterwards. It's actually pretty ridiculous when you think about it.

"I believe that before you get your provisional you should have to be able to prove you have done a number of mandatory driving lessons."

Belt up

When, in 2006, the Road Safety Authority decided to find out how many drivers wore their seat belts, it discovered that one in five men and one in 10 women didn't bother - pretty much the same figure as it had come up with when it did the same survey a year earlier.

When it looked at the number of front-seat passengers who strapped themselves in, it came up with almost identical results - but more than a third of back-seat passengers didn't see the point of belting up.

If more people used their belts, fewer people might die in crashes. Last year 366 people were killed on Irish roads. By yesterday, this year's total had reached 279.

Of the 80 or more aged between 15 and 25, 27 died in Dublin (population 1.2 million), 25 died in Cork (population 482,000) and 14 died in Donegal (population 147,000).