A woman teaching her daughter to drive has said she now realises the sheer scale of “bad behaviour” on Irish roads, now she is viewing the roads through the eyes of a passenger. 

Dr Suzanne Crowe, who works as a consultant in paediatric intensive care, has recently begun helping her daughter practice her driving in preparation for her test. 

For her, it has been a revelatory experience. 

 “When you see it from the eyes of a learner, you can see how much bad behaviour there is going on around us on the roads,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.  

“And we're all guilty of it, I'm as guilty as everybody else.” 

Dr Crowe added that “we all know the rules” but people simply disregard them. 

“I mean, you have to obviously do the learning and pass the test,” she said. 

“So I think everybody knows the rules; you're just shaving a little centimetre here, you're just pushing the rule a little bit - reasonably safe in the knowledge that there isn't going to be anybody around to stop you.

“And I think it is what is causing problems.” 

In total, Dr Crowe and her daughter have spent 30 hours on the road together over the past month. 

“So, that's quite a lot of time,” she said. 

“Just during the daylight - I didn't want to push her too far by driving at night.

“And we didn't see any Garda traffic enforcement vehicles; I'm not looking to give the Gardaí any heat.” 

“Because at the end of the day, we shouldn't really need a Guard on the back of a bike glaring at everybody at junctions to tell us what to do.” 

Man image: An L plate. Picture by: True Images / Alamy Stock Photo