By John Spain

YOU may be aware that there have been a number of horrific car crashes involving immigrant drivers on Irish roads recently. In spite of this you are unlikely to read a headline like the one above in an Irish newspaper.

Any criticism whatsoever of Ireland’s new immigrant population these days is jumped on by the apostles of political correctness here as evidence of racism. So there has been a reluctance on the part of the media here to confront a major problem caused by the behavior of many immigrant drivers on our roads.

And it’s not just the media who have been slow about confronting the problem. It’s the Gardai (police), the lawyers and the whole state-funded multi-cultural sector, all of whom have learned to speak in the politically correct jargon that generalizes and contextualizes until getting answers to simple questions about non-nationals in Ireland becomes impossible.

You might think that the Gardai would be able to answer a simple question like: How many non-nationals have been involved in serious road accidents in Ireland in the past year? But you would be wrong. A spokesman for the Gardai explained that no, they don’t compile any statistics on particular groups in relation to road accidents.

The reason they don’t, of course, is that to do so would not be acceptable in our new multi-cultural Ireland where singling out foreigners and keeping separate statistics on them on their involvement in accidents, crime or anything else would be seen as racist. That is the official position.

The unofficial position, however, is that Gardai will tell you off the record that there is a major problem here now with the behavior of immigrant drivers on Irish roads. And members of the ordinary public here with characteristic bluntness unencumbered by political correctness back that up with disturbing stories of reckless behavior by some foreigners on our roads.

In spite of the official reluctance to come up with the statistics, figures for the number of immigrants who have died this year in accidents on our roads have now emerged, largely through reporters and a few opposition politicians sitting down and going through the files on roads deaths, crash by crash. What is revealed then is that close to 25% of all road deaths here so far this year have been non-nationals.

That, of course, is way out of proportion when you look at the number of foreigners here in relation to the size of the local population. It is even more out of proportion when you realize that many immigrants here don’t have cars because they can’t afford them. So the number of accidents being caused by the relatively small number of immigrants who do have cars is shocking.

An awareness of the extent of the problem — and the emergence of the statistics — came about because of two horrific crashes in particular. The first was about two months ago in Donegal, a head-on crash in which both cars involved were being driven by and were carrying non-nationals.

Four Latvians and one Lithuanian died. The odds against two cars carrying non-nationals crashing into each other in remote Donegal had to be astronomical. Yet it happened, and that forced a lot of people here to admit that there was a problem.

The second crash was two weeks ago, and this time it was a car with four Polish men which ran into a truck on a straight stretch of road in Cork. All of them died.

Again, the carnage horrified people here and renewed questions were asked about the behavior of foreign drivers on our roads, particularly East Europeans. This accident again was a head-on collision and it was on a straight stretch of road at a time when it was raining and visibility may have been diminished.

Both accidents seemed to support anecdotal evidence about poor driving being given by ordinary people who contacted radio shows here to voice their opinion.

Many of the East European immigrants who are here have little money (since they were unable to find work at home) and tend to drive very old (and cheap) cars on Irish roads.

Some of these old cars are bought here but there is now a growing trend for these immigrants to bring cars with them from home, driving their cars across Europe and then bringing them in here on the ferry.

Many of these immigrants have only a hazy knowledge of what is required to make a car legal on Irish roads.

Foreign cars in here permanently are supposed to be reregistered in Ireland but immigrants routinely ignore this requirement, partly because Vehicle Registration Tax is payable. Cars that are more than three years old here must have an NCT certificate (National Car Test) to prove they are mechanically sound. But many immigrants either ignore this or claim that their cars have passed similar tests in Eastern Europe where standards are much lower.

Similar problems arise in relation to insurance. Many of these drivers are driving on Irish roads on Polish or Latvian or Lithuanian insurance (costing about one fifth of car insurance in Ireland) which they claim covers them here. So when they are stopped at Garda checkpoints on the roads they produce these documents in foreign languages, and there is not much the guard can do except wave them on.

You don’t have to be Einstein to work out that this cheap East European insurance cover is unlikely to add up. Car repair costs, hospital charge and personal injury settlements in Eastern Europe are all a fraction of what they amount to over here.

So it does not make sense that cheap East European car insurance will provide the same level of cover as car insurance here. We won’t know for sure until there is a test case ... say if an Irish person suffers serious and permanent injury in a crash here in which an East European driver is judged to be at fault and the Irish person wins damages of a million or two in court. Will the insurance company in Lithuania or wherever pay up?

Unfortunately some East Europeans are bringing more than their old cars with them to Ireland. They are bringing their bad driving habits as well.

After a hard week’s work here (in jobs like mushroom picking which Irish people won’t do) they tend to go a bit mad at weekends, drinking and driving and speeding. This mirrors the behavior of drivers that is common in Eastern Europe today, where getting drunk and roaring along country roads in clapped out bangers is as common as it used to be here 30 or 40 years ago before we all got rich and sophisticated.

There is also the obvious point that these old cars from Eastern Europe, apart from possibly dodgy brakes, suspension, steering and so on, are also left hand drive cars in our right hand drive system. Which makes overtaking on busy, narrow Irish country roads very difficult for a driver who has to lean way over into the passenger side to see around a slow truck in front. Drivers in such situations are much more likely to get frustrated and take chances.

The use of foreign driving licenses by immigrant drivers means that many of them have never sat a driving test here and so their driving skills and knowledge of the rules of the road in Ireland is untested. In the opinion of some Gardai many immigrant drivers don’t have a clue of what is required and use guesswork instead of a proper understanding of roads signs, rights of way, rules of the road and so on.

Their use of foreign licenses also means that they escape the new penalty points system. Under this system, you get points on your license for exceeding the speed limit not wearing seat belts and so on.

There used to be just a few offences that attracted points, but a few weeks back that was increased to over 30, causing much angst among motorists here because when you accumulate 12 points on your license you get a driving ban. This does not affect immigrant drivers because their foreign licenses are not part of the computerized system here so they can’t be loaded with points.

Another factor in all this, of course, is that many East European immigrants here in the past year or two have been young males. Like boy racers here and everywhere, they like to drive fast when they get the chance.

Added to that they bring with them their culture of fixing-up old bangers, drink driving and speeding on poor roads. It can be a lethal cocktail.

So far, there have not been any clear-cut cases in which Irish people have been killed by dangerous driving by immigrant drivers. But it is only a matter of time — and when it does happen here there is likely to be a backlash.

Already there is a lot of frustration here among motorists who have been caught up in minor accidents with immigrant drivers and then find that claiming repair costs against their foreign insurance policies is either difficult or impossible.

Such is the concern about all this that a nationwide road safety campaign is now getting underway aimed at immigrants, with free literature being produced in nine languages, like Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, etc.

Last year, around 400 people died in Irish road accidents. In Poland it was over 6,000. Even smaller countries like Latvia and Lithuania had 600 and 800 road deaths respectively.

We already have a poor record in Ireland for road accidents, particularly in the boy racer category, but the arrival of so many immigrant drivers with poor driving habits has made a bad situation here infinitely worse.

What we can do about it is far from certain. The government is making threatening noises about impounding vehicles.

The insurance companies here are screaming for action (partly because under the present system they have to pay into a central fund which picks up the tab for accidents involving uninsured drivers and the immigrant drivers are making this worse).

But so far no real action has been taken. In an inspired move a few weeks back, Transport Minister Martin Cullen appointed the former chat show host Gay Byrne as the new head of the Road Safety Council here. So at least we can expect some straight talking on the issue.

But unless we ban all foreign licenses, make Irish driving tests compulsory for everyone, ban all foreign insurance policies and impound all foreign cars until they pass NCT tests, then we won’t see much improvement.

If it was down to me, I would immediately ban all left hand drive cars.