The chief executive of the Road Safety Authority, Noel Brett, has urged parents to ensure that their children are properly prepared and capable of driving on Ireland's roads.
He said that parents were happy to spend long hours and a lot of money helping with activities such as sports or dancing lessons for their children, but would then be happy for them to drive a car without the necessary supervision or training.
Mr Brett said, "We have to move beyond the days of parents just giving their child a car, providing motor insurance and then lying in bed at 3am fretting. There needs to be a greater level of parental responsibility in relation to the issue of road safety. It is not just about young people it is about parents too. People do not take learning to drive seriously enough."
New measures to reduce the alcohol limit for learner and novice drivers to 20mg per 100 ml from 80mg per100ml have already been passed by the Oireachtas.
However, Michael Healy-Rae, a councillor based in Kerry said that more had to be done to prevent so many young people dying on Ireland's roads. He said, "The Road Safety Authority is obsessed with drink-driving. It is not drink-related that is causing these enormous amount of deaths and heartbreak. It is speed, or the feeling that these young people think they are invincible. These things need to be addressed. It is a bigger issue that drink and driving."
A new leaner permit process is to be introduced, which will replace the old provisional licence system. The new measures will prevent people from sitting their driving exam unless they have had a learner permit for at least six months. All learner drivers will also have to be accompanied by someone with a full driving licence for at least two years.
The new licence system is expected to include a measure that requires the learner driver to receive a set number of hours of professional lessons, which is then logged and signed off by a qualified driving instructor.
Curfews will not be introduced under the new system, as it would penalise novice drivers in rural areas of the country who depend on their vehicles to get to and from work at late hours of the day.
Road accidents where young drivers aged between 17 - 34 years old were killed have seen a drop of one-third in the last decade.
Rochelle Martinez, Freelance Web Content Article Writer for three years. Some of her articles are about http://www.quinn-direct.com.
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