By John Spain

IT happened here again last week, another horrific car crash in which several young men were killed. And once again it was not on a motorway around Dublin or near some other city in Ireland, but on a secondary road way out in the country.

This time it was on a straight stretch of road outside Ballinrobe in Co. Mayo, a quiet and beautiful part of the country, a most unlikely place for an accident. Yet the car with the three young men crashed head-on into an oncoming truck at high speed. The carnage was so horrific that a local man who lives nearby and who was first on the scene could not bring himself to look into the twisted wreckage.

Out of respect for the grieving families, speculation about what happened has been muted. But comparisons with a similar head-on crash here barely a month ago are unavoidable. In both crashes high speed and young drivers were involved.

Last week the three young men who were killed in Mayo were 20, 21 and 24. A few weeks back in the other crash, five young men in Co. Monaghan died when two cars were involved in a head-on collision minutes after the five left their local bar in the two cars in the early hours of the morning.

Four died immediately and the fifth died a few days later. They were aged 18, 19 , 20, 21 and 24.

Both crashes involved cars of the type favored by those who are into performance and speed. Because the Monaghan crash involved two cars carrying young men who knew each other and was head-on, there was immediate speculation that a game of chicken had been underway.

This has been strongly denied by the families, and those denials have been accepted by the Gardai (police) who think that one car had doubled back to pick up someone, and what happened was an ordinary accident caused by excessive speed.

What is not deniable, as in last week’s crash in Mayo, is that high speed and country roads were factors. Gardai who examined the wreckage in Monaghan, removed one of the speedometers and found that it was stuck at over 90 mph, an insane speed for a country road.

What is also no longer deniable is that we have a major problem here now with so-called boy racers, young drivers who go much too fast for the kind of roads they are on and the conditions. It’s a function of our new prosperity, too much Pimp My Ride and Need for Speed and all the rest of the TV shows and computer games that glorify car modification, high performance and fast driving.

Thanks to our new wealth, even youngsters in country areas in Ireland now have the money to buy cars and tweak the engines and then drive around like maniacs. There is a whole culture of this around the country, from the joyriders racing stolen Beemers around deprived estates in the suburbs, to young men way out in the country in souped-up cars who tear along winding local roads that are sometimes barely wide enough for two lanes.

It’s partly a function of our new found wealth. With all the new cars that are being bought, there is no shortage of cheap secondhand vehicles, many of them with powerful motors. Sometimes it’s not the youngsters who buy them; sometimes it’s the indulgent parents who should know better.

There have been all kinds of suggestions on how to cope with this, from putting speed limiters on cars, to outlawing souped-up cars, to capping the engine size that an under-30 can drive, to making driving skill courses essential for all youngsters before they get their first license and so on. All of these things could help.

But the real solution lies in changing attitudes to the point where it’s just not cool anymore to speed. And doing that is a major challenge.

If you look at the age and sex breakdown of the few hundred people killed in Ireland each year in car crashes, young males are a very high proportion. And a very high proportion of them have been drinking, often heavily. Of course there is the same problem in other countries, but it’s particularly bad in Ireland at the moment.

Apart from the awful agony for the families of those killed in the speed craze, our high road fatality figures have consequences for ordinary careful drivers of all ages here as well, one of which in particular has been making the news here in the past week.

That is the effect of the Garda anti-drunk driving campaign on people who consume a modest amount of alcohol and then drive home very slowly and very carefully.

The national outcry that follows the boy racer crashes always culminates in demands for tougher action to reduce the number of road deaths. And since so many of the boy racers who kill themselves are frequently loaded with large amounts of booze, the outcry often centers on people who drink and drive.

Which is simplistic nonsense. Not everyone who drinks and drives is a serious risk on the roads. The middle-aged farmer who has three pints in his local bar and then drives very carefully the few miles home (because he has no other way of getting there) is not in the same league as the boy racer who has eight or nine vodkas and then screams down country roads at 90 mph.

Attentive readers will remember that I made this point in this column about a year ago when I was bemoaning the death of the country bar in rural Ireland. I wrote then about the typical well-behaved ordinary citizen, probably in his 40s, 50s or 60s, who was a regular customer in his local country pub.

When he drove slowly home after three or even four pints along his familiar route, he was far less a threat than the drugged or alcohol soaked boy racers out of their heads and driving like lunatics, I wrote.

I can say this in this column. But you can’t say this in Ireland without drawing the politically correct ascetics down on your head.

Anything more than one pint of beer here puts you over the limit. In Dublin, where there is public transport and taxis, you can get to your favorite bar and home again without breaking the law. But it’s a different story down the country, especially if you’re a farmer living a few miles down a side road.

Many people like that no longer go to the pub because they can’t get there and back without using the car. The result is that the main social hub in rural Ireland — the local pub — is dying because of intolerance and stupidity.

Social isolation for many middle-aged people living in the countryside is the sad consequence. They can’t risk losing their license by being caught and breathalyzed at a Garda checkpoint on a country road after pub closing time, so they stay at home.

Last week here one brave — possibly foolhardy — local politician in Tipperary drew attention to this nonsense and the tragic effect it was having on rural society. The Fine Gael councilor called Michael Fitzgerald said he thought that it was okay to drink three or four pints of beer and then drive.

He said that there was nothing wrong if the person was careful and responsible. It was preferable to people in the country becoming isolated in their homes.

Predictably, there was an immediate outcry, and the councilor was portrayed as an idiot (it was pointed out that he himself had been caught driving while over the limit).

Fitzgerald said most fatal crashes involved 17 to 22-year-olds and were a result of speed. He said the mandatory drunk-driving crackdown by Gardai was damaging the culture of rural Ireland.

He said that older people who “have a few” are not a road hazard. But the Fine Gael national executive dumped him, fearful that anyone might think the party is soft on drunk drivers.

Even so, Fitzgerald got some support from an unexpected source, from Joe Donovan, the Fianna Fail chairman of South Tipperary County Council — the same council on which Fitzgerald sits.

Donovan agreed that many people who engaged in driving after “having a few” would never have an accident. He said that “people in their 50s and 60s and 70s are having a few and driving home. In most cases where the people are drinking the same couple (of drinks) all their lives, it would have no effect on them. They never had an accident — and never would.”

After that it was Fianna Fail’s turn to get hysterical, and some heavy phone calls were made to shut up Donovan. Fianna Fail head office played down the remarks, suggesting that Donovan was “in no way condoning drink driving.” He had been misunderstood, a national spokesperson for the party said.

That’s the problem with local councilors of a certain age. They know they’re never going to get to the Dail (Parliament). So they say what they think. They even speak the obvious truth now and then, rather than the politically correct line.

Pretty soon all the experts were weighing in. Even one alcoholic drink affects a driver’s judgment, they said. That’s why the limit is at that level.

And of course that’s true. But it’s all a question of degree.

How much is a driver’s ability impaired after two or three pints? If a middle-aged farmer drives home slowly and carefully after three pints, is he as much a hazard as a boy racer with 10 vodkas onboard doing 90? On a scale of one to ten10 who is more likely to have an accident? If the boy racer is a 10, is the farmer even a two?

The answer is no. As Fitzgerald said before he was silenced, the point is proven by all the farmers who have been driving carefully home for years and years after a few pints and have never had even a scrape, never mind a serious accident.

There is one simple solution to all this, in my view. We need a system that distinguishes between boy racers and responsible older drivers, and to do that I have come up with a suggestion.

If I was taoiseach (prime minister) I would impose the following rules. Under 30s, no alcohol whatsoever if you’re driving. Under 40s, two pints allowed. Over 40s, three pints allowed.

This may not be perfect and could be fine-tuned with experience, but the rules need to be simple so that everyone knows their limit. It might work. Are you listening, Bertie Ahern?