So, should gaybo go?

Hobbes

Heard on the radio this morning calls for Gay Byrne to stand down in his position as hes completly bloody useless in the job (more people died since he started).

After reading around all his comments and what he has done so far I would have to say yes.

He claimed young people were ignoring road safety campaigns and that all he could do was to warn people to reduce speed and not to drink and drive. "I don't know what else we can do. We have done all the horror ads, but there are obviously a great number of people who don't look at television, listen to radio, or read newspapers and don't get the message," he said.

Clearly young people should be watching more television then everything would be ok. :rolleyes:

subway

well after blaming the death of all the young people on the roads in ireland on not watchin enough tv ive a feeling he wont last much longer.

his "authority" have apprently only met 3 times in the last 3 months.

i dont know if thats true or,tbh, even relevevant to the work they do,
butm i havent heard anything from them and have no impression of an increased campaign for road safety.
except of course for the "best of" colection of clips from other road safety ads thats been airing recently.

but why is tv ads enough?
the government continues its mantra of "speed kills",
when we all no its dangerous spped that kills,
not some doing 45kmph on a 40kmph section of high qulaity 3 lane dual carraigeway.

jhegarty

subway wrote:

not some doing 45kmph on a 40kmph section of high qulaity 3 lane dual carraigeway.

you did what !!!!

that will be 4 points .......its not like you where doing something safe like doing 120kph on a back road at 2am...

lostexpectation

Hobbes wrote:

Heard on the radio this morning calls for Gay Byrne to stand down in his position as hes completly bloody useless in the job (more people died since he started).

After reading around all his comments and what he has done so far I would have to say yes.



Clearly young people should be watching more television then everything would be ok. :rolleyes:

is his org fully set up yet? all places filled? its a bit early to fire him, although he should never gotten the job in the first place.

the people calling for gaybo resignation because more people have died since he started his job are as clueless as gaybo, and overstating his importance

subway

lostexpectation wrote:

is his org fully set up yet? all places filled? its a bit early to fire him, although he should never gotten the job in the first place.

according to todays indo, [reliable sources :rolleyes:]
after 3 months -
the authority have not been established fully
have met 3 times
when set up it will have a 30m eu budget and 300 staff.

i presume if it takes them 3 monhts to set up,
it will take them a while to actually go about doing anything useful at all.

Villain

TBH I don't think Gay is the one who should be going, he is a public broadcaster not a Road Safety expert, his appointment was purely a PR stunt by the government and it looks like its working, i.e. by people calling for him to go instead of balming the inaction of our Government.

Eddie Shaw brought many proposals when he was in Gay's job and he was met by a brick wall in Government. They have to take some blaim for these terrible deaths, they have been in Government long enough to make a real impact on this issue, every other country in Europe has a falling number of road deaths while our figures just rise and rise, but hey we elected them!

subway

irish1 wrote:

TBH I don't think Gay is the one who should be going, he is a public broadcaster not a Road Safety expert, his appointment was purely a PR stunt by the government and it looks like its working, i.e. by people calling for him to go instead of balming the inaction of our Government.

Eddie Shaw brought many proposals when he was in Gay's job and he was met by a brick wall in Government. They have to take some blaim for these terrible deaths, they have been in Government long enough to make a real impact on this issue, every other country in Europe has a falling number of road deaths while our figures just rise and rise, but hey we elected them!

you dont think he should go but feel his appointment is PR stunt?
sutrely we should get rid of him as he is hopelessly under equipped to do the job,
and seems uninterested in actually doing anything.

there must be someone out there who can do the job right?
or at least highlight where its going wrong.

Villain

Well I don't think he should be used as a scapegoat, but yes I agree with you the chairman of this authority should be someone properly equipped to do the job, perhaps Gay should move to a different PR type role.

subway

quoted from gay bynre in todays indo -
"i dont know what else we can do"
"people are respondsible for their own driving and behaviour on the roads"

well, if he feels theres nothing more he can do and that he is unable to influence peoples driving then what is he doing in this positition.

if thats his attitude hes made it clear where he stands.
he has no intention of doing anyhting more than "horror ads" and he openly admits that these dont work.

Brilliant!!!

Heinrich

A major part of the problem is that there is ample leglislation for misuse of the roads but inadequate policing. When many offenders are apprehended the penalties are not applied due to whimsical judges and crafty lawyers. This means that there is small risk of proper sanctions for road crime.

I do not think that young people are responsible for the carnage, shoddy law and order is. But let us not forget how glib our government is and how foolish we are for constantly voting the same inept lot back in.

bonkey

subway wrote:

well, if he feels theres nothing more he can do and that he is unable to influence peoples driving then what is he doing in this positition.

I wasn't aware it was part of his job to personally come up with the strategies.

Maybe what he should do is hire more strategists and/or listen to what the existing ones are telling him. Then again, I'm not sure hiring and firing his staff and choosing staff levels is also part of his job.

It is also possible that within their budget and remit there is nothing else they can do and what is needed is for a serious rethink about how to tackle the problem, up to and including legal reform (which I'm pretty certain is both needed and not part of his job).

Brilliant!!!

Just as brilliant as blaming the man for the shortfalls of the position and/or believing that an interview is a suitable conduit for him to fully explain his side of the issue.

Scráib

To be honest, what can Gay Byrne do in his job? He's suppose to highlight what's wrong and he's doing exactly that. He can't issue laws. He should, but he can't.

He's told everyone what's wrong, and is anyone listening? No. We're all too happy with the system because it lets us off with bad driving.

An example of this is the law that provisional drivers should have a qualified driver with them, this is deemed as 'unenforceable'. Now that's just stupid, because many provisional drivers are young drivers with little experience. Yet they drive on their own, which is dangerous.

So people want Gay Byrne to stand down because he hasn't done anything. Newsflash folks, it isn't his job. He's suppose to say whats wrong and the government are supposed to rectify it. He's done his part, and well, it's down to the government now.

AdrianR

The root of the problem is simply that the current speeding laws/penalty point system isn’t being enforced. Up until the penalty point system was introduced a greater percentage of fatal accidents were happening on National routes, since the introduction of the penalty point system the deaths on primary routes has increased dramatically. In all my years of driving I’ve only seen a speed check point on a primary route 1 time that wasn’t in a 50 or 60km zone. People who speed know this, so they drive within the limit on the national routes and once on the primary routes which they put the foot down. Another major problem is that at times when the vast majority of fatal accidents occur, i.e weekend night time, the Gardai are too busy trying to keep public order so checking for drink driving gets neglected to a certain extent and checking for speeding is totally neglected.

As for Gay Byrne, he’s not long in the job, but if he thinks that ad campaigns are going to change the attitude of young male drivers, then he’s definitely the wrong man for the job. I’m a firm believer that the majority of people don’t tend to change their attitude because it’s morally the right thing to do, so add campaigns aren’t very effective, they have to be shown that there will be consequences to their actions if they break the law, they also have to be shown that if they break the law there is a very high likelihood that they will get caught in the process, at the moment this isn’t the case with regard to a number of laws in Ireland, speeding is only one example of this.

dbnavan

What the RSA need to do, is clone Gay Byrne, 100,000 times and give one to everyone in the audience with every previsional licence......But seriously what can one man do? He is a figure head, they could get Pamala Anderson to ask young male drivers to slow down and it wouldnt work. He is there to promote road safety and thats what he is doing IMO.

lostexpectation

Scr&#225 wrote: »

So people want Gay Byrne to stand down because he hasn't done anything. Newsflash folks, it isn't his job. He's suppose to say whats wrong and the government are supposed to rectify it. He's done his part, and well, it's down to the government now.

how can he have done his job when the road safty commission hasn't been set up yet, and why is he saying the same thing he said a month ago by saying people don't watch enough TV?

subway

sorry,
i only know what i read/hear about this man and his job.
i have heard very little from over the past few months.
I quoted him saying there is nothing more he can do.
if its not his job then why we would he admit he cant do anything else?

as its his job too highlight things that are wrong,
i feel he is underperforming as nothing has been highlighted to me and I am his target market apparently.
young male, 20 - 25, provisional car license etc.

as some people seem to know what isnt his job,
more than gay seems to anyway going by his interview this morning.
can you inform me and other reasrs,
what his remit is,
his targets and what is expected of him.

that way we can jdge if he is doing his job,.

lostexpectation

isn't it Noel Brett who has been the man in charge (apart from the depts) since 2005?

Villain

lostexpectation wrote:

isn't it Noel Brett who has been the man in charge (apart from the depts) since 2005?

Noel Brett is head of the DTSA, or to give him his ful title: Chief Executive Officer designate of the Driver Testing and Standards Authority

is_that_so

Seems that the local hotelier went to visit the families of the bereaved to pay his condolences.
Now what kind of answer is he likely to give to the question "Should Gay Byrne reisgn?" ?
You can't make Gaybo repsonsible for all the ills that happen on the road.
As most posters have mentioned he is only in the job a "wet week". To be fair to him he is speaking an unpalatable truth.
We do love to blame other people for what we won't or don't do especially when it comes to roads.

In my opinion,the day that this carnage stops is the day they lock up people for texting while driving.
Permanent bans for drinking and driving and say a mandatory 5 year ban for dangerous/careless driving.

I also see no reason why this years budget surplus cannot immediately be diverted to Templemore and the recruiting of say 500 extra Gardaí plus cars specefically to police the roads.

Gay Byrne should in all honesty be on every TV and radio show calling for this and if he had the bottle,he should ignore his bosses and go around the country attending rallies asking for this to be done.

See if they would sack him...

Villain

I agree Earthman the penalty for been caught drunk driving or speeding at very high speeds are no detterent at all, I mean very very rarely do people see the inside of a jail cell if they are convincted of dangerous driving causing death, IMO that convinction should carry the same penalty as Man Slaughter.

Driving a car while drunk or driving in a dangerous fashion which could cause an accident should be the same as been in poccesion of a lethal weapon, because thats exactly what you are behind a wheel if you drive dangerously - a lethal weapon!

Heinrich

irish1 wrote:

I agree Earthman the penalty for been caught drunk driving or speeding at very high speeds are no detterent at all, I mean very very rarely do people see the inside of a jail cell if they are convincted of dangerous driving causing death, IMO that convinction should carry the same penalty as Man Slaughter.

QUOTE]
That would apply to those who actually get caught! Sadly there are thousands more offenders who will never get caught due to insufficient police numbers!

Another point I would make is that those who die on the roads are not all boy racers. There is shoddy law enforcement and it might be an idea to clean up that particular mess before laying the blame on the victims of this sad state of affairs. There is far too much rhetoric and not enough action from our overpaid administrators.

lostexpectation

irish1 wrote:

Noel Brett is head of the DTSA, or to give him his ful title: Chief Executive Officer designate of the Driver Testing and Standards Authority

and he is also the 'designate' CEO of the new RSA... was he not the man in charge for a while infamous eddie shaw was about too?

http://www.rsa.ie/ABOUT_US/ABOUT_US/Navigation.html


apart from training and enforcement the governments job is protect the people being hit and killed by these reckless drivers.

anybody know anything about these guys?

Joining the RSA Chairperson, Gay Byrne on the Board will be:

* Aine Cornally, Director of Customer Support Services, Bank of Ireland Global Markets
* Myra Garrett, Partner, William Fry Solicitors
* Paul Haran, former Secretary General of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment
* Tom Kelly, Dublin Institute of Technology and ROSPA Motorcycling Inspector
* Ann McGuinness, former County Manager, Westmeath County Council
* Aaron MacHale, Rally Driver
* Tony McNamara, General Manager, Cork University Hospital
* John O'Gorman, Assistant Director General of FÁS

surely the road safety is still under the auspices of the NRA and NSC, and has not yet moved to the RSA?

Hobbes

lostexpectation wrote:

anybody know anything about these guys?

Looks like a jobs for the boys alright. Reminded me of Brownie.

Villain

Aaron MacHale!!! I know him and hes not imo exactly a peson I would be looking to promote safe driving, thats crazy, although I suppose he may be able to give an insight into what makes young people speed.

gbh

I don't think the 'Uncle Gaybo' image he has cultivated over the years will help him in this job. Ideally you want someone with a DArth Vader Image in a road safety job.

He's too much the nice guy etc, and what you want is someone who takes no s**t, who people fear, who frightens you in doing the right thing..I don't think he does that...but you can't lay all the blame at his door...people should learn that if you drive irresponsibly then you will more than likely suffer the consequences..

BuffyBot

I can help but be reminded of the Richard Branson "Litter Tsar" incident in the 1980's, when he brought in to head a project by the government of the time, and before he knew it, the government had tranformed into him heading a "war on litter". I'd love to know exactly what Gay Byrne's brief was exactly..and I can't help but think "scape goat" either.

Sparks

What would be the point in sacking a guy who can have about as much impact on the problem as the price of bread in outer mongolia?

mountainyman

He should never have been given the job in my opinion. Brittany has seen as huge fall in road deaths and so has the province of Victoria in Australia. Maybe a competetent senior civil servant from one of those places rather than a retired TV presenter?

Anyway he won't be fired; the whole thing is ludicrous.

MM

Heinrich

Sparks wrote:

What would be the point in sacking a guy who can have about as much impact on the problem as the price of bread in outer mongolia?

Cost saving?

These guys are expensive...

Heinrich

Heinrich wrote:

That would apply to those who actually get caught! Sadly there are thousands more offenders who will never get caught due to insufficient police numbers!

Another point I would make is that those who die on the roads are not all boy racers. There is shoddy law enforcement and it might be an idea to clean up that particular mess before laying the blame on the victims of this sad state of affairs. There is far too much rhetoric and not enough action from our overpaid administrators.

500 extra Road Gardaí,thats say 20 per county with 10 extra cars per county with 2 to a car would be a good spend for the budget surplus.

Time this tired excuse of a government got kicked out and replaced with something fresher.
Sadly its the nature of politicians, that they will always look for the easier way to get re elected-so inevitably whoever replaces this lot are likely to be as conservative as the next when it comes to spending money on common sense ideas.