Chauffeur Drive Ireland. Driving in Ireland.

Life on the road in Ireland does have its risks and even as someone who does it for a living i always make sure that i stay fully alert. I suppose i grew up here and have become used to them and the roads back then were even worse than they are now but there was a lot less traffic in those days. It was not possible to drive at the speeds that people drive at nowadays either and in many ways it was much safer. Cars were made of better stuff and if you hit a wall the wall was more damaged than the car. Now most of the cars we drive are like tin cans and you have little chance if you hit anything solid. When tourists rent a car they generally go for an economy type and these offer little protection. My transport is of the standard required if you are to have a chauffeurdrive licence and these cars are much safer. We also have a lot of foreigners on our roads who are not used to driving on the left hand side and that also creates new problems.I chose this subject today because my mind is very much on the news of a horrendous accident yesterday evening when five young girls, all students in Galway, were involved in a collision with a truck not too far from Galway city. Four of the girls were killed and the surviving young lady and the truck driver are both in hospital and i do not know how badly they are injured. This accident happened on a main road between Galway and Claremorris but this main road has some very dangerous accident black-spots. Even our main roads here can be extremely narrow in places and when you get off them and onto our secondary roads you really do need to know how to drive. My life as a private driver/tour operator does have its dangers and the cost of insurance is high. If you have any accident record it gets really expensive but thank God i have a clean record and no penalty points ever. I say that with gratitude and do not intend to get overconfident because of it and i treasure my record and want to keep it that way. If you are thinking about coming to Ireland my advice would simply be....if you can afford your own private driver or chauffeur then that is the way to go. If you run the risk of driving yourself then you not only run the risk of being seriously injured or worse but maybe even a slight accident will cost you more than the difference between a private driver and a rental car. It is also so much more relaxing to be able to sit back and allow a qualified person with experience of Irish roads , and Irish driving, to chauffeur you around.
Our weather continues to be miserable, wet and windy and cold, but thankfully i am not touring at the moment. This is my time for planning next years tours with potential clients and when i finish this message i have to make a call to a lady in the USA who wants to come over for two weeks with her husband and another couple in June 2010. I will have a very nice plan for them and if they are lucky they will say "Yes".
Talk to you again soon. If you have a comment please write here.