Cars with defective headlights

shnaek said:

Statistically only 0.3% of accidents are caused by defective cars.

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What about all that cars in Ireland that "went off the road", or "drove into a wall", or "went out of control" causing so many people to die?????

ronan_d_john said:

What about all that cars in Ireland that "went off the road", or "drove into a wall", or "went out of control" causing so many people to die?????

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Is this a tongue-in-cheek comment? Or are you really blaming the car for these incidents?

shnaek said:

Statistically only 0.3% of accidents are caused by defective cars. This concentration on headlights etc. reeks of uninformed mob sensationalism. Pity the press doesn't behave responsibly and report the facts - for example the way that Northern Ireland has reduced road deaths through education and the elimination of right turn black spots on all roads by creating a right turn lane.

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This discussion is about defective headlights shnaek. Not always the cause of an accident, but really annoying (and dangerous) if you come across them.

macnas said:

Last night I was driving for one hour. In that time I met 12 cars coming towards me with defective headlights (some had 1 full head light, some had 1 full and 1 parking light ). These can look like motorbikes until they pass by. Lots of other cars had lights that were misaligned.
I had thought it would be an easy task for any Garda to identify these cars and take appropriate action. Do the Gardai stop cars at night anymore?
That same night 4 people were killed in car accidents. Why is nothing being done?

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The origional poster as we can see here makes a spurious connection between headlights and 4 people being killed. All I was trying to do was highlight the need for the real causes of road accidents to be identified. I guess it is a topic many of us feel strongly about seeing as how we all drive and would prefer to drive with minimum risk to our lives.
Like other issues of importance I would like to see the real causes of problems being tackled and I feel that sensationalism fuelled by certain sections of the media are blinding us to real solutions which may be tougher to implement than the cosmetic solutions produced by the authorities at present, but which will achieve results.
The governments attitude to road safety is shameful.

shnaek said:

This concentration on headlights etc. reeks of uninformed mob sensationalism.

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According to Kevin Delaney, Traffic and Road Safety Manager for the RAC Foundation in the UK:

“Each year motorists wait for the end of summertime to discover that one or more lights isn’t working and each year badly lit vehicles are involved in crashes that could have been prevented by a simple two-minute check of lights and indicators. Vehicles with defective lights are not only a menace they are illegal and in 2001 police and the courts dealt with around 50,000 such offences. " (taken from roadsafe.com)

I am not saying that they aren't a problem. I am suggesting that perhaps concentrating on the cause of 0.3 percent of accidents is not the best use of Garda manpower at this present time.