Anyone who daily drives the N1, N2 or N3, the State's busiest primary routes, could be forgiven for thinking that nothing is being done about either the condition of the infrastructure or what can only be described as the criminal lunacy of so many drivers.

The agencies and local authorities charged with maintaining and upgrading the roads, implementing road-safety strategies and enforcing the law insist, however, that they are working harder than ever to make the roads safer and to reduce fatalities.

Although the National Roads Authority has, apparently, dealt with more than 300 so-called black spots in the past five years, there are many more on the main routes to be dealt with, as is clear from the horrific crash last month outside Monasterboice, on the M1 in Co Louth, in which a young couple on their way to Australia were killed.

Slane Bridge, on the N2 to Derry, has had more than its share of publicity due to the huge number of fatalities on a 100-yard stretch. But although traffic-calming measures have been put in place on the bridge since the death in February of two-year-old David Garvey, in a car crushed by a lorry, the NRA has no plans to bypass Slane.

Residents believe that were the stretch of road for half a mile on each side of the bridge included in Slane's accident statistics, the figures would more thadouble.

John Ryle, who lives just off an almost invisible junction - he warns you to watch out for it, but you miss it anyway - just south of the notorious bridge, became involved in the local campaign to bypass the town and improve road safety after the accident.

"All of a sudden, everybody just lost the rag," he says. At the public meeting following the last fatal crash, people said they were there out of shame for not having done anything earlier, even though there has been pressure over the years to change the design of the bridge, which has a sharp turn at each end.

Although the traffic-calming measures are welcome, Ryle points out that "all the signage and road markings in the world" won't stop a truck that's speeding or out of control.

At May's Cross, a few miles north of Finglas on the N2, one resident, who asked not to be named, says she is aware of at least one serious accident every week but has stopped counting. After years of complaining to the local authority and the Garda, she has given up.

One of the most recent accidents was frighteningly similar to the one that killed the young couple near Monasterboice, she says. A truck "just ploughed into the back" of a car that was turning right. Fortunately, nobody was killed.

The Garda doesn't keep figures for the number of material-damage accidents on this stretch of road, because they are so frequent. A spokeswoman estimates that there are one or two a day - that's anything up to 700 a year.

A fool could see the dangers at the junction. With a small shop on one side and a garage almost opposite, trucks often park two deep on double yellow lines and block access to residents' homes, according to the local woman. There is a national school just yards from the main road.

There have been one or two fatalities over the years, but she fears it will take a really serious crash for anyone to "sit up and take notice". Making a right turn from the northbound side of the road, which has no filter lane, is a potentially lethal move. This section of the road is due to be bypassed, but the project is in only the early stages.

Like the numerous local authorities across whose borders these roads stretch, the NRA is keen to defend its record on safety measures. In Louth, the county council insists it takes action when accidents are reported. Mary Mullholland, its road-safety officer, says "everyone in the country" has an understanding of Louth "for its bad road-safety record".

"Meath and Louth show disproportionate figures for traffic accidents, and it's very important that people be aware why," she says. "The area has a number of national routes running through it. If you compare the number of registered vehicles and the number of inhabitants, it looks disproportionate if you don't also point that out. It has a large number of national routes and a huge volume of through traffic."

The council has a "low-cost remedial works scheme" to improve black spots, and the NRA also funds traffic-calming measures on the national routes. The council will "acknowledge" a bad junction or bend, says Mullholland, "but sometimes bends can cost hundreds of thousands and several years to deal with".

Larry Whelan of Meath County Council says similar traffic-calming measures, as well as a programme of signs and road markings at schools, are being implemented on primary and secondary roads.

But our appalling road-accident figures are not down to engineering defects alone, and it would be irresponsible to suggest that they are, even if "remedial measures" are often a bit like putting a sticking plaster on a broken leg.

Engineering is one of the three Es - the others are education and enforcement - we need to tackle, all the authorities agree. Of these, enforcement is the "single most important variable" in preventing road deaths, according to Conor Faughnan of the AA.

But the infrastructure certainly needs to be improved, he says. "The better the quality of a road, the safer it is. Motorways are five times safer than single-carriageway roads, so engineering is a significant factor. So many Irish roads are of single-carriageway construction. Motorways are the safest roads we have by an order of magnitude."

The general argument that Irish roads will never be safe is an "intellectual cop-out", he says. "If our nearest neighbours can have roads that are almost twice as safe, there's no reason we can't."

Eddie Shaw, the chairman of the National Safety Council, is in Australia, researching successful road-safety measures in Queensland and Victoria, which take road safety "much more seriously" than we do.

The political decision has been taken to invest in road safety - and the level of investment is staggering compared with ours, he says.

Based on his visit, he will make recommendations to the high-level group responsible for the national safety strategy, which will be updated next year and rolled out in 2003.

It is wrong to say that nothing is being done to improve road safety, says Shaw. "Without a shadow of a doubt, there are things we could do much better. A lot of things have been done that are good, however. The Government has a road-safety strategy since 1998. If that hadn't happened, there would be many more people injured. All of these things going on have saved lives."

But he believes the number of people killed on roads each year could be reduced by 200 - and the number seriously injured by 1,000 - simply by reaching Australian levels of enforcement, which involve the extensive use of speed cameras and random breath testing.

The numbers caught and prosecuted in the Republic for speeding and drink-driving don't come close to the levels we need. "Detection in Ireland is at such a level that it simply does not act as a disincentive," says Shaw.

"When we launched our annual report recently, I said things that were quite emotive. I said the rate of intervention in drink-driving cases" - 10,500 - "is one for every licensed premises in the country per year. That's a nonsensical figure, but it's not the guards' fault."

When random breath testing was introduced in Australia, the incidence of drink-driving "collapsed", he says.

Gertie Shields, who founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving after her daughter was killed, along with five other young people, by a drink driver in 1983, supports some of the enforcement measures in use in Australia, regardless of their sensitivities.

"If you had random breath testing, of course you'd have complaints from the civil-liberties groups. But it's not a civil liberty to be speeding or drink-driving.

"They can get up in arms all they like. People don't have these sort of rights. They should get up in arms about the bodies on the roads. Rights are sometimes assumed when they shouldn't be."

Insp Gerry O'Brien, who heads the Garda's Louth-Meath traffic unit, says he will "never say no to more resources".

He agrees that, with the resources available, it is impossible to police traffic offences around the clock in such a large area, especially when the division is also dealing with public order, subversive activity and several murders this year.

But the issue most central to road safety, according to Mullholland, of Louth County Council, is taking responsibility. "Ownership of road safety has to belong to everyone who uses the roads: to drivers, motorcyclists, cyclists and pedestrians. The ownership of responsibility should not be offloaded onto any one agency, whether that be the local authority, the Government, the NRA or the Garda."

The trouble is that those who have most responsibility for safer roads - those of us who drive, cycle and walk on them - don't seem to care.

Series continues tomorrow