Editor Tessa Ndjonkou moved to Ireland nearly two years ago and never looked back. Except when she crosses the street.
Look right, left, then right again. One foot in front of the other and onto the road. I’ve done it a thousand times before. It’s a dance so natural I hardly have to think about it. Until I did. I moved to Ireland on September 10th, 2022 and I’ve had to relearn everything I used to know about road safety as a pedestrian.
While moving to a country where people drive on the left-hand side of the road as opposed to the right side might seem like an easy adjustment, I’ve come to realize that my deep-seated and frankly reckless habits might make the shift more difficult. I have been living between a small French town and Geneva for over a decade and it has led me to let my guard down. The almost ritualistic approach I’ve developed as a pedestrian and daily user of public transport has only become clearer to me over these past two years.
The almost ritualistic approach I’ve developed as a pedestrian and daily user of public transport has only become clearer to me over these past two years.
We often say that we know something like the back of our hand, but how well do you know the back of your hand?
Who’s to say you haven’t missed a spot, a ridge, or a lone scar?
The road is like an estranged hand to me and it took me moving across Europe to remember it.
Road safety is too often taken for granted and when I look at the RSA data I am reminded of a sobering fact: if we do not change the way we act on the road and learn to appreciate the unsung heroes in charge of maintaining road safety we could very well be at risk of reaching the highest death toll Ireland has ever seen on the road and scaling back on the progress that has been made so far. Amongst the habits I’ve had to abolish are jaywalking and having my headphones during the entirety of my commute; actions I’ve come to realise are far from being benign. The initial confusion of being on the “other” side of the road made me alert in ways I haven’t been in a decade and I recall being especially grateful for the signs on the concrete telling me which way I ought to look. While I understand our daily commutes will come with some degree of automation due to habit, we are not robots and this should be the level of distrust we should have on the road.
The initial confusion of being on the “other” side of the road made me alert in ways I haven’t been in a decade and I recall being especially grateful for the signs on the concrete telling me which way I ought to look.
The consistent increase in deaths on the road attests to this need for vigilance increase with the Road Safety Authority (RSA) declaring a 19% increase in deaths on Irish roads between 2022 and 2023. These new figures reveal that road deaths in the Republic of Ireland were highest in nearly a decade with 184 people killed in 173 fatal collisions in 2023 compared to 155 deaths in 149 collisions in 2022. Most notably, however, the number of pedestrians killed has increased by 12 percent which is the biggest increase in casualties the Road Safety Authority has reported.
We are at a crossroads, where we must reckon with the fact that a growing number of distractions are made available to us. Namely, smartphones, headphones, social media, and even our nine-to-five schedules directly impact the amount of attention we can allocate to road safety. However this phenomenon is not contained to Ireland, indeed, other European countries like France have road safety trends that have evolved slightly differently to Ireland’s. According to the French Interministerial Observatory for Road Safety (Observatoire National Interministériel de la Sécurité Routière) casualties on national roads have slightly decreased in 2023 with 440 victims across the country or a 10% decrease. Although the number of deaths on highways has lowered in most areas, the number is still steadily climbing since 2019 with a 4% increase.
We are at a crossroads, where we must reckon with the fact that a growing number of distractions are made available to us. Namely, smartphones, headphones, social media, and even our nine-to-five schedules directly impact the amount of attention we can allocate to road safety.
Between the two countries these similarities show a need to increase our vigilance as users of roads but also to continue to celebrate the unsung heroes of our roads: the drivers who slow down when we are unfocused, the cyclists who signal before they turn and even the friends who put their hands out to stop you from walking into ongoing traffic.
All in all, moving to Ireland has shown me that I need to unlearn and relearn all I thought I knew about getting from one place to another and that many of us can afford to.