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Documentary on One: We Decide Who Lives or Dies

Scene of a crash outside Letterkenny in which three people died in July 2016 1-DSC00252 Image Name: Scene of a crash outside Letterkenny in which three people died in July 2016 1-DSC00252
Scene of a crash outside Letterkenny in which three people died in July 2016  1-DSC00251 Image Name: Scene of a crash outside Letterkenny in which three people died in July 2016 1-DSC00251
Scene of a crash outside Letterkenny in which three people died in July 2016  1-DSC00242 Image Name: Scene of a crash outside Letterkenny in which three people died in July 2016 1-DSC00242
Marks from drifting on the Fanad peninsula   1-DSC00229 Image Name: Marks from drifting on the Fanad peninsula 1-DSC00229
Marks from diffing on the Fanad peninsula   1-DSC00226 Image Name: Marks from diffing on the Fanad peninsula 1-DSC00226
Kelly and Sarah with friends parked up socialising in Letterkenny 1-DSC00222 Image Name: Kelly and Sarah with friends parked up socialising in Letterkenny 1-DSC00222
Kelly and Sarah parked up socialising in Letterkenny 1-DSC00219 Image Name: Kelly and Sarah parked up socialising in Letterkenny 1-DSC00219
Cars parked up windows down at 'Be Bobs' car park in Letterkenny 1-DSC00263 Image Name: Cars parked up windows down at 'Be Bobs' car park in Letterkenny 1-DSC00263

Documentary on One producer Ronan Kelly visited Donegal in mid-July to talk to drivers about their use of cars and to understand why the county is near the top of the tables for road deaths.

He speaks to those who refuse to wear their seatbelts – because they’re uncomfortable, because they feel they’re not driving fast enough to need them, or one taxi-driver who leaves it off so he can get out of the car quickly to chase fare evaders.

Kelly talks to young people who socialise in their cars in Letterkenny – one man who drives around the town from 6pm until 6am on a weekend night seeing who’s about. He meets young farmers, too young to drive, who bring their tractors into town “to impress women”.

He speaks to drinkers outside a pub who said they used designated drivers. One man said his designated driver had consumed four or five drinks already, but they weren’t worried because they were going home by quiet back roads.  This man lived in Sweden where he said you’d never get away with drink-driving.

” Then, a few days after recording these interviews, there were five deaths on the roads near Letterkenny.  Four of those who died weren’t wearing seat belts.”

 So, Kelly went back the following weekend.  He spoke to a truck-driver who came across one of the incidents and the three dead bodies there.   He also met the priest preparing his sermon for the funerals.

 He met  again with those young people for whom their cars are so important and asked if the deaths in the previous days would affect their driving.    Most said ‘no’ because they said they were safe drivers anyway.

 One man told him that he had had an accident four years previously:

“Going around the corner, 125 mph.  Hit 8 steel pillars, 2 ESB poles and wall.” 

 He wanted, he said,

“To get a picture to see what the car could do. 

And that’s what she could do – 125.” 

 

He doesn’t normally wear a seat belt but that night he did. “That night, if I didn’t have it on, I was dead.”

 

While he was being interviewed he was wearing also a seat-belt but only because he’d just seen a Garda car cruising by.

 

The title of the documentary comes from a comment by the Road Safety Officer of Donegal County Council, Brian O’Donnell, 

“When we step into a car – we decide who lives or dies.” 

 

TX – Radio 1, 1pm, Saturday, August 20, 2016