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ONE IN THREE fatal road crashes were caused by speed between 2008 and 2012 – making it a much bigger factor in fatal collisions than previously thought.
Donegal, Cork, Wexford, Cavan and Galway had the highest rates of speed-related fatal road accidents, according to the report launched by the Road Safety Authority (RSA) today.
And 91% of culpable drivers were male.
The report shows speed could account for twice as many fatal road accidents in Ireland than previously thought.
Liz O’Donnell, RSA chairperson, said previous research based on preliminary garda crash scene reports estimated that excessive speed was a factor in 15% of fatal collisions.
“[This] shows that excessive speed plays a more significant role in collisions on our roads, accounting for one in three fatal collisions analysed between 2008 and 2012,” she said.
The faster you drive, the more likely you are to kill or seriously injure yourself or someone else if you are involved in a collision. Slow down – drive at a speed that is appropriate to the conditions and your experience, and remember a speed limit is not a target.
Research
Over the four year period, 322 people died on Irish roads in collisions where speed was a contributory factor and 74 people were seriously injured.
Of the 322 people killed: 158 were drivers, 49 were motorcyclists and 100 were passengers.
84% of drivers involved in a single vehicle collision were under 34 years of age and weekends were a high risk period for speed-related collisions.
New technology
The RSA’s Annual Road Safety Conference is examining the use of Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) to reduce speed on our roads.
Professor Oliver Carsten, of the University of Leeds, said the technology has the potential to reduce collisions by 30% and reduce deaths by 20%.
ISA uses a video camera that recognises speed signs and a GPS system to advise drivers of the current speed limit.
The most advanced systems can automatically limit the speed of the vehicle. However, the driver is still able to override the system.
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Driving too fast and too close to the car in front. It seems to be how people think you are supposed to drive in this country.
Phone in ear, looking “through” the steering wheel, plus sense of entitlement written all over their face, not a care in the world. Hands up anybody that has witnessed that scenario. EVERYDAY!
You just described driving in South Dublin everyday mostly women too
you sure? – the statistics don’t back-up your claim
Forgot that women do no wrong on The roads. Apart from hogging overtaking lanes on motorways, not having a clue what’s going on around them and driving dangerously slow at times
You should beep your horn at them Gary
the figures show that their driving doesn’t cause accidents directly. They may cause drivers to get frustrated and have a knock on effect to an accident I guess. The thing is the speeding angry driver is still the actual danger and who knows what will set them off.
Kal Ipers, forget the fact that Gary is missing the point to the article what figures show that women’s driving doesn’t cause accidents.
As it was said in the life of Brian, ” Is there any women here? ”
Checkout everybodys reds!
I wish my wife would drive dangerously slowly….
Must get the full stats. These refer to speed related accidents 33% – so so far we have 91% of 33% of accidents caused by men. Is that right? So that would be 30% overall so far. I’ll go to the RSA site and check
So 76% of fatalities are male. If 76% of drivers are male then gender is not a factor. However – from a survey this evening on the way home it looks like there are more female drivers out there, which means that men are even more at risk of death than the 76% might first suggest.
But we can’t know for certain without knowing how many drivers are on the roads and the percentage of each gender who die as drivers.
Women and men can be equally bad at driving but in different ways.
Agreed. While it doesn’t make for good reading and is a serious problem, just wondering what the reaction to this article would be if a male author singled out a specific statistic within a large report that targets female drivers in a negative light..
I predict the reaction would be mostly men slagging women drivers as usual.
Equally bad?
Men = Literally kill people on roads
Women = Do things you personally don’t like
Where in the ever loving is the “equally”.
Get lost “Emily” with your Twitter troll blog that has nothing BUT rants against feminism on it. Doubt you’re a woman at all.
Bryan, I’d like to ask you something, it may seem a bit off topic but it’s relevant.
Do you think that the fact that males get better grades in HL maths is to do with biology or teaching influences on each respective gender?
@Malachai
I’d like to ask you something. Why don’t you make that comment on the actual article just a little bit down the feed that talks about that very topic?
But since I’m in a generous mood I’ll answer anyway. If you wanna boil down a complex issue that stems from numerous roots, biological, sociological, curricular, pedagogical, and cultural into an A or B question, then you go right on ahead. I actually addressed this very issue, in relation to falling test scores for boys in numerous LC subjects as my dissertation during my PGDE.
My conclusion was that the DOE is too incompetent to deal with more than one issue at a time. Girls were under-performing in the scientific and mathematical subjects so they focussed their efforts for 20 years and addressed that, with tremendous success, but took their focus off maintaining boys’ interest and performance so that the figures literally skewed the other way. Now they’re desperately clamouring to address the falling grades of boys in certain subjects, and predictably since they’re incapable of implementing truly universal approaches to ANY educational issues, the same thing’s happening.
Add to that the abnormally large numbers of single-sex schools in Ireland when compared to other countries and the fact that the DOE will implement policies used by other countries that don’t have this strange phenomenon willy nilly regardless, because developing their own approaches is too much like hard work.
The reason I asked the question here is because I feel that people (not sure if you would include yourself) are quite happy to call out men for statistics like this about car accidents, yet when women perform ‘poorly’ statistically we are told that there is some outside factor causing them to do badly.
I saw the article below and it was specifically relating to female grades in HL maths, which they are falling quite far behind in. You would attribute this to DOE priorities, presumably? Then surely, it is unfair to judge men by a different light re: this article?
Maybe there is some ‘outside factor’ causing men to cause more road accidents, that it is not biological. It just seems to me that if you’re going to make the outside influence argument one way you should be consistent.
@Malachai
Where are you getting this from? I’m all for examining the causes of this…I’m all for a government body looking into the cultural .etc reasons behind this and advising educational policies based on that. I’ve never once said that the reasons behind this are simply “men are bad and want to kill people”. All of my comments have been in response to people who want to completely dismiss the results of this research and shut down ANY discussion about the reasons for it. I’m 100% behind examining why this situation has come about. It’s the anti-feminists and derailing artists who are causing the damage here, refusing to even accept the truth evidenced by these statistics, and crying “MISANDRY!!!” at the merest hint of people identifying and wanting to address the issues involved.
And I’ll apply this to areas from academic performance, to depression and suicide rates. The sad fact is that whenever discussions about genuine issues affecting/caused by men are brought up, it’s men themselves who try to shut down discussion about it. Female TDs take on issues that affect women, work at them, bring attention to them, and get changes made. Meanwhile, our male TDs (who have the majority in the Dáil) don’t seem to care at all about men’s issues. We’ve one of the highest suicide rates of young men in the world and our TDs are cutting millions from the mental health budget and launching multi-million ad campaigns about bald tyres.
If you drive between Enfield and kinnegad and stick to the 80kph speed limit you will be forced into the ditch as drivers both male and female try to overtake you.
Nothing wrong with being in a hurry to leave a shįt hole!
Yeah but you will just get to another shite hole quicker, it’s nicer to spend the time in the car
I know it well Not….historically one of the most dangerous stretches of road in the country.
Sitting behind a driver doing 50kmph on the Galway to cliften road, was very annoying, every overtaking opportunity was block by road works or on coming traffic. People who can’t drive a reasonable speed shouldn’t be able to drive as they too cause crashes.
I recall in the UK a citizen was made redo her test because she was doing 15mph in a 30 mph zone and was deemed dangerous by the police. You would fail your test too doing that.
Can you cite for me where on of these deaths was caused by a driver going too slow.
You sound like an American defending guns. Speed is a major contributing factor in fatal collisions, the facts speak for themselves. Other people not driving as fast as you might like is no defence, public roads are not racetracks.
So we can surmise that Matty is quite likely to be one of those safe idiots who drives at 50km/h with knuckles welded to the steering wheel while sat bolt upright!
And how cool do you think a crash scene with a fatality looks? Why don’t you contact some of the peole involved and see how they feel about it now?
And I hope you won’t be one of those dead fools, one hand on the wheel, the other one stuck in a hedge.
When doing the speed limit, in good weather, good driving conditions, it’s not dangerous.
This should be given to slow drivers too!!!!!!!
And 90% of insurance claims from backing into pillars and other vehicles while attempting to park are women…
Right, but this article is about speeding.
This article is about speeding. The blame on men has obviously caused you to become defensive.
Yup it is… Funny how it’s acceptable to publicize the recklessness of men yet you never see an article critiquing the stupidity of women.
@Drew
You’re so overly-sensitive and getting offended at every little thing. Darned conservatives these days, such thin skins. You need to get off the Internet and live in the real world.
And can you produce the stats on this statement ?
Whataboutary.
How may people have been killled by a women (or man for that matter) reversing into a streetlamp? Do you somehow claim it is somehow less stupid to cause a fatal through using excessive speed?
How many of the culprits also under the influence while speeding?
Speeding itself is not usually the issue it is inappropriate speed that is the most dangerous. For example; on a motorway with little traffic 150km/h could be safe but the same stretch with a lot of cars and rain then 100km/h may be inappropriate.
150km/h on a Motorway is not safe If an external event cause you to lose control of you vehicle and you hit anything, you will almost certainly be killed.
Appropriate speed only applies to speeds below the posted limits.
And you think you’ll survive at 120km/h, calling you an idiot would be an insult to idiots.
@ Craba Rev
So everyone is just dying on mass on the autobahn’s are they?
Silly statement, nevermind that cars are infinitely better than they used to be and we are still stuck at pedestrian speeds. I could go on a little rant here but afternoon snacking is calling.
I think it is pretty obvious that the belief people can choose a speed they think is safe is the problem.People get it wrong and kill people. Do you think these driver who kill thought they were dangerous? It is the arrogance they know better that causes the problem
Had a sandwich so much better now.
Right, did the report also look at road implications, I doubt it as that is so often left out of the equation. Did someone get mighty peeved off from being stuck behind a numpty causing untold frustration and then took a silly risk.
These reports are so often not worth the paper they are written on, who performed the analysis, who ordered the reporting and what body crunched the data. Road condition, corners, external environmental factors all contribute to a crash and these are hardly ever considered.
Ireland roads are some of the worst I have encountered driving through so many countries and to simply say yea, it was speed is the same methodology of how they blew out the death by smoking numbers. Died, did they smoke yep, well, died of smoking then.
Sounds like a click bait headline backed up by data that is questionable at best.
Basic physics would tell you the faster you are going the more likely you are to crash and that more damage will be done. It is not a liner increase, An incident occurring at 75 kph gives you only 66% of the reaction time to brake compared to 50 kph but you already need to bleed off twice as much energy to stop.
A collision at 75 kph has twice the energy of a 50 kph crash.
Yeah at light speed you are guaranteed to crash. I’d say you don’t have a clue about basic physics not to mind statistics!
Current theory believes a particle with mass cannot reach light speed because the energy required approaches infinity as you approach light speed.
As you, your car or anyone elses car contains matter, it cannot travel at light speed a would therefore be unable to crash at light speed.
it is your attitude which causes needless the needless deaths that this article highlights. The sooner it becomes a manslaughter charge the better.
Ah but Matty, what speed does the light from the headlights on a car traveling at almost the speed of light travel at?
@Ted
Is that being observed from an outside source or from the car?
Because relativity is a real bollox.
At a speed no greater than the speed of light in a vacuum, mostly depending on the water content of the atmosphere at the time
Still Gary, the stats are alarming. No matter how much you argue.
I agree it is bit women are no saints some of the worst driving I’ve seen is from women
Gary,
The article is specifically about speeding. Personally I am quite shocked that this result is a surprise to anyone. In my experience it is men that speed and not women.
#MasculinitySoFragile that I’ll complain about things I personally feel are inconvenient which women do on the roads rather than accept the fact that men are literally responsible for more people dying.
I hate women so much that I’ll whine and moan about things that aren’t even illegal in order to deflect attention from the fact that my gender is actually killing people on the roads.
Men are breaking the law and killing people, but as far as I’m concerned, doing things that I don’t like is what makes a bad driver.
You’re so sensitive and easily offended. Have a snickers.
@Bryan your words: “I hate women so much that I’ll whine and moan about things that aren’t even illegal in order to deflect attention from the fact that my gender is actually killing people on the roads”
So your transgender! Go on let it all out.
Joke. Sorry couldn’t resist.
Have a Mars bar.
You’ll have to point out the joke there.
Pro-tip: If you’ve to tell people it’s a joke…it’s a terrible joke and/or not a joke.
It about speeding ok, but they won’t tell you that inappropriate speeding causes more crashes (not accidents) than excessive speeding.
So law breaking is ok when you deem its appropriate. I would bet that in most of these incidents the driver was fully convinced his speed was appropriate.
What a childish headline. Of all the slants you could’ve chosen on this data, the fact that this is the one you opted for betrays a fairly nasty sexist streak. Why not break down fatal accidents by skin colour?
@Lorem
I didn’t spot you on the article about male students performing better in Leaving Cert Honours maths, complaining that it was sexist to word the headline that way.
Hmmmm…I wonder why that might be.
* Single out men to try and highlight a problem that’s literally killing people = Lorem goes into a frothing rage to complain about all that damn sexism.
* Single out men to try and bring a silver lining to generally worsening academic performance among male students in recent years = Lorem doesn’t care.
You’re the typical anti-fem. you don’t actually care about men at all. You only pretend to when you can use it as an excuse to have a go at what you perceive as sexism, which in actuality is just your own insecurities and sense of victimhood.
But it’s the feminists and liberals who are overly sensitive and get offended at everything right?
Frothing?
I don’t comment on most articles here. I don’t even see most articles here. Demanding that I comment on every article in order to build up some kind of ideological consistency is unreasonable. The question is whether the comments I do post are consistent. I’d say they are, but feel free to do some more trawling through my history here, frothing all the while
Nothing you’ve said in your personalised and irrelevant critique has any bearing on the point I made; the headline focuses on sex for no reason other than grinding some sad anti-male axe
It’s a statistical fact. Should they just have omitted that fact because it makes you feel uncomfortable?
And yet it’s illegal to reflect this in our insurance.
I don’t understand the headline. What does it mean? Makes no sense.
Gerard,
I think it means that when there is a crash in which the cause of the crash is determined to be speed that the vast majority of times (91%) the driver that was speeding was a man. Not exactly a ground breaking revelation!
So if one third of road fatalities are caused by speed does that mean that two thirds of deaths were caused by slow driving? Meaning that if people speed more there would be less deaths. This is the logic of this story.
If speeding or driving slow were the only causes of car crashes you might have a point Gérard
If the percent of deaths were caused by guns that doesn’t men that 90% of deaths were the result of not having a gun.
If 10% of deaths had been caused by guns, that would mean that 90% of deaths had not. Whether they had a gun or not.
Gerard,
Other factors such as drink driving, drug driving, falling asleep at the wheel, mechanical failure, debris on the road etc etc. Surely you can work out this logic… I assume that you are taking the mick!
I am aware if all that. This article is about men and speeding. I’m trying to understand the article in full. But it’s only half a story. Could the figures also be that 91% of none speeding crashes were caused by women? What is the point? Is it that speeding is bad? Just one third of fatalities apparently was because of speed.
Yes, Ger, speeding is bad. It’s the most basic no-no in driving and yet it still occurs at an alarming rate.
But speed causes the least amount of deaths?
There are three scenarios, too fast, appropriate, too slow. Meaning 2/3 of accidents fall into the appropriate or too slow category.
Would it not have been a more interesting article if it was about the more dangerous aspects of driving then. If speeding was the cause of one third of deaths. Surley an article about the main causes if road deaths would be more interesting. Unless it was purely to shock people with figures that look shocking but mean absolutely nothing.
Drivers choose to speed though. Not all road accidents are caused by reckless driving but by things that might not be within the driver’s control. The two thirds could be a mix of a variety of factors, but the fact that one third is just speeding is alarming considering it’s avoidable.
Road deaths caused by speeding are not always caused by speeding alone, they would also be the drunk/drug driver, falling asleep, etc….
Right so, speed all you like then, Ger.
I’m not trying to justify speeding. I’m trying to understand why half a story is here. It’s bad writing like this that twists figures just to try and shock people. ONE THIRD OF FATALITIES CAUSED BY SPEEDING. 66% are not.
Cancer is responsible for under 30% of all fatalities in Ireland. Obviously not worth a mention considering over 70% of people don’t die from cancer.
It’s a conspiracy alright, Ger.
No, I’m sure that they are the facts.
So using that logic people should not develop cancer just to bring down those figures? Which could be difficult, most likely impossible.
Gerard
All dogs have 4 legs, my cat has 4 legs therefore is my cat a dog? Obviously not! This is because they are not mutually exclusive. Try applying mutually exclusive logic to your interpretation of this article and you may see the light!
More bull shite from the RSA. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1061808/Speeding-drivers-cause-3-car-accidents-figures-reveal.html
Looks like cyclists didn’t cause may fatalities but comments on cyclists suggest they are a huge danger. No its drivers and hasn’t changed
Speed doesn’t kill, its the abrupt stop that does the damage
I am aware if all that. This article is about men and speeding. I’m trying to understand the article in full. But it’s only half a story. Could the figures also be that 91% of none speeding crashes were caused by women? What is the point? Is it that speeding is bad? Just one third of fatalities apparently was because of speed.
Not very bright Geard are we?,
But I will go slow for you.
In 4 years over 300 people were killed in incidents caused by speeding drivers.
in over 90% of cases (try counting your fingers, when you get to one what’s left is 90%) men were the speeding driver.
Speeding is preventable, by not speeding.
Most of these deaths were avoidable.
Very tragic.
Matty. Do you know what my problem is. It’s articles like this that spew out figures for the sake of it. I’m fully aware of the percentages of male drivers speeding which has tragically caused the deaths of 322 people and injury so many. But why do we need to know this micro statistic. Why not over two years or ten years. It is because over the four year period the percentages were higher. Matty, you seem to be a person of an open mind why are you happy with this micro statistics. I unlike you Matty like to know all the facts. I’m never content with snippets of information. I most certainly would not make a personal judgement of any gender or age on this sort of headline. I sure hope you would not either.
Is more than 300 deaths in 4 years a micro statistic to you gerard?
How many pointless deaths are required before it crosses your interest threshold?
How many, Mothers, Fathers, Husbands, Wives, Girlfriends, Boyfriends, Sons, Daughters, brothers, sisters…….etc need to die before its worth taking about?
Driving without reasonable consideration is a penalty point offence. Also overtaking lanes are for overtaking you have a snickers and read the rules of the road .
Women drive slower because you can’t drive fast in one of those little pink things with your granny in the back.
Which weren’t mentioned in the comment of yours I made that response to.
You might have noticed that if you hadn’t forgotten how to use the ‘Reply’ button in your premature indignation.
Close your eyes…take a deep breath…and have a Snickers.
Look, you make some good points Bryan, but don;t you think you’re taking this New Man/Feminist thing too far?
Are you not taking your “thick eejit” thing too far.
Thanks for the compliments about my good points, I wish I could say the same about yours. Nothing new age/male feminist about it in the slightest, I just hate when anti-fems get into such frothing rages about anything that even vaguely suggests that there might be some problems with cultural masculinity, that they throw a hissy fit and make absurd accusations or completely dismiss/deflect from genuine statistical research in favour of maintaining their internal narrative that somehow they’re being victimised when literally no one, anywhere is out to get men.
Jeez!
Did I say all that?
I’m deeper than I thought.
What caused the other 2/3 of accidents and how many of the single vehicle accidents were suspected suicide?
Brilliant question Ciarán, I should’ve thought of it myself. There’s growing evidence that many recorded single-vehicle accidents are in fact suicides, reflected by their growing frequency since the beginning of the depression.
We’ve already got one of the highest suicide rates among young men in the world, and quite often the actions of the Gards investigating serve only to downplay just how serious this problem is likely to be. Usually it’s the Gards trying to do the right thing, recording a suicide as an accidental death in order to keep the stigma from being attached to the family in rural communities, or to help the bereaved family obtain the life assurance.
Good intentions with a potentially devastating side-effect. Our TDs are already defunding millions from mental health services with that high suicide rate, while (bringing it back to the sibject of road safety) launching a multi-million ad campaign about bald tyres. Maybe if the true scope of the problem was revealed, it might finally lead to some action.
It’s cool to cruise!
No shit..
Speed is just a mathematical formula
Distance/Time
Speed in itself can not kill therefore the convenient soundbyte of ‘Speed Kills’ is totally incorrect.
What does kill is inattention to road conditions, bad road conditions, lack of patience, weather conditions, traffic etc.
This is further exacerbated by being impaired from driving due to tiredness or drugs including alcohol.
Kinetic energy, is related to speed by the formula 1/2m(vv) where m is the mass and v is the speed. As you can see doubling speed in a collision quadruples the energy involved. It is the energy which does the damage.
Saying Speed Kills is like saying Gravity Walks. Its not the physics that matters, its the driver not paying attention, being distracted, day dreaming or getting frustrated while driving that causes accidents. Poor decisions while driving causes fatal accidents. Getting focused on speed limits distracts from poor driver training, (I’ve passed two tests and failed one- and I don’t think I’ve enough training), and inadequate consequences for all parties in an incident. Personally, I think all parties involved in an accident should sit a retest on their driving test. Pay attention all around you, and if you feel yourself being distracted, stop.
have your say