In the past four days, nine people have died on the roads of the Republic. Six of the dead were young men, a category notably at risk. They included the 18-year-old son of the eminent golfer, Christy O' Connor Jnr, and a member of this year's victorious Kerry All-Ireland under-21 football team. But, as if to remind us that death on the roads does not discriminate, the latest victims also include a 75-year-old man, knocked down by a van near his home in Co Kilkenny, and an eight-year-old schoolboy, dragged under a school bus after a cord on his anorak became entangled in the vehicle's door.
This week's deaths are appalling but also, sadly, commonplace. The line on the graph of road fatalities has been rising for several years: 404 in 1994, 433 in 1995, 453 in 1996, 474 last year. So far this year, 302 people have died, making another grim record as likely as not. And behind those bald statistics lie hundreds more people crippled and maimed and countless other lives blighted by the loss of those they love.
After a rash of road deaths such as this week's, some drivers may slow down, forswear drink-driving or always fasten their seatbelt. But for how long? The sad truth is that the shock wears off and bad habits reassert themselves. Who now remembers the dozen deaths over the Easter weekend, five months and 195 road deaths ago? And have driving habits changed in the meantime?
In a report published this week by PMPA, more than 50 per cent of drivers surveyed admitted to speeding - the principle factor in fatal accidents - with men under 30 the worst offenders. The problem is compounded by the number of unqualified drivers on the roads - 330,000, or almost one in four. According to Supt Vincent Maguire of the Garda National Traffic Policy Bureau, speeding is primarily "a young person's problem".
In other words, there are large numbers of young, incompetent, unqualified or barely qualified drivers hurtling along the roads at dangerously high speeds. It is a frightening prospect. Only yesterday, Dundalk District Court adjourned a case in which a 21-year-old motorist from Co Down, who was "too afraid to appear in court", admitted driving at 140 m.p.h. near Dunleer, Co Louth.
Irish laws governing provisional licence-holders are both lax and largely unenforced. Decisive action is long overdue. The same applies to seat-belt regulations. Barely over 50 per cent of drivers and front-seat passengers belt up, compared with over 90 per cent in Britain. The package of measures proposed by the High Level Group on Road Safety and approved recently by the Cabinet has already been welcomed in these pages; it includes greater enforcement of speed limits, random breath-testing and a penalty-points system for certain offences leading to the automatic loss of a licence. But new measures will be useless unless they are enforced with considerably more vigour than those we already have. And there will also need to be a complete change in a culture which regards lethally reckless driving as a minor misdemeanour.