The voice on the radio sounds chillingly detached. “The death will occur of your loved one. They will die tragically in a preventable car crash early next month,” prognosticates the Road Safety Authority’s latest campaign ad, called Time to Talk. The voice warns that you and all belonging to you will be devastated and forever left regretting that you never challenged the dearly departed ones about their dangerous driving habits. Their fatal road journey becomes your guilt trip. It’s a clever ad worth heeding.

By the eighth day of this month, 72 people had died on Irish roads since New Year’s Day. Many of them were young people who, until the moment of impact, were fit, healthy and strong. There are doctors who believe that, had they received specialist clinical or surgical interventions at the crash scene, some of those people would still be alive. That is a haunting thought for the bereaved but it is one this country needs to address.

Major trauma is the biggest cause of death among children and young adults in Ireland. On May 8th, when just a third of the year had elapsed, an 18-month-old child was killed by a car in Co Clare. With his death, Ireland reached the target of 72 road deaths that has been set for the whole of 2030 in its Vision Zero strategy. Only days earlier, a 15-year-old girl died in a crash in Co Wicklow. On February 1st, three friends aged 19, 21 and 25 died in a crash on a country road in Co Carlow. In a 48-hour period that same month, two young men aged 19 and 20 were killed in Limerick, a........

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