Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 27 June 2024
Public Accounts Committee
Financial Statements 2022: Road Safety Authority
9:30 am
Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source
I recently read comments on learner drivers by two experts: Dr. Elizabeth Box, who works in road safety in the UK, and Dr. Lisa Wundersitz, an Australian. They state that, typically, learner drivers are safer due to the supervised environment. They state recent statistics on unaccompanied learner driver collisions are deeply concerning and highlight a significant deviation from the expected safety norms during the learner period. This was stated at a European conference discussing what I believe were some 155 deaths of learner drivers over a five-year period. Action 27 of the RSA's road safety statement is on the elimination of "the incidence of unaccompanied learner permit drivers". Has it allocated funding for that? I asked in February and was told there was no budget allocated to implement action 27 of the road safety strategy.
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