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THE INCREASE IN road deaths in Ireland since before the pandemic is the worst in the EU, new figures show.
Ireland is also among a minority of countries where road deaths increased last year relative to 2022, according to preliminary data from the European Commission on the number of road deaths per million inhabitants.
Across the EU as a whole there was a 1% fall in road deaths last year, with the Commission warning that progress was “stalling” in “too many countries”.
The trend in Ireland was among the worst, with a 19% increase in road deaths here last year, when 184 people lost their lives, a large majority of them men.
This was 33% higher than before the pandemic in 2019.
Gardaí have suggested speeding and mobile phone use are likely to be among the factors contributing to the tragic increase in lives lost. Recent reseach has also shown that one in 10 motorists drove a vehicle after consuming alcohol last year – although the contribution of alcohol to the increase in road deaths has not yet been quantified.
Former success story
Ireland was once a European success story in reducing road deaths. In 2006, 365 people died on Irish roads. This fell by almost two thirds in the years to 2018.
However, since the pandemic, Ireland has diverged from the EU norm of falling numbers of road deaths. Already in 2022, Ireland was one of only six EU countries where road deaths were higher than they had been pre-pandemic in 2019.
Ireland still has one of the lowest road fatality rates per million inhabitants in the EU, with only the Nordic countries, Germany and The Netherlands doing better.
However, Ireland has slipped in this ranking too over time – from fourth best in 2021 to seventh best last year.
Across the EU, there was a 10% fall in road deaths in 2023 compared with 2019. Ireland had the fourth highest increase in road deaths in 2023 relative to 2022, behind the three Baltic states of Lithuania (33%), Latvia (27%) and Estonia (20%).
Overall, few member states are on track to meet EU and UN targets of halving road deaths by 2030 relative to 2019, the Commission said.
Over half of fatalities happened on rural roads across the EU in 2022.
Cyclists most at risk
The Commission expressed concern at the number of cyclists killed on EU roads in 2022 (as detailed 2023 data was not yet available).
“This is the only main road user group not to see a significant drop in fatalities over the last decade, notably due to a persistent lack of appropriate infrastructure and unsafe behaviour of all road users such as speeding, distraction and driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs,” the Commission said.
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Driver standards shocking. No indicators, speeding, phone usage, tailgating, no patience, the list is endless.
@Fiona Wyse: there is some truth in what ypu present here yet nothing about dark roads with both pedestrians and cyclists with dark clothing and no lighting including those on ebikes and scouters. It’s gone so bad for this at home now I dread driving by night. Also drug driving is a massive issue and I never see checkpoints for this.
@Mic JHintl: What does a ‘drug driving’ checkpoint look like?
@Mic JHintl: And when you’re driving down a dark road and a car with led lights is driving towards you, you’re left blinded for a couple of seconds. And there is no way to prove that that could be a factor in single car collisions. I think they ran a poll about LED lights on cars a few weeks and most people found them to be too bright and compromised their driving because they’re blinded by the light.
@Fiona Wyse: Really, you must spend a lot of time watching other drivers, maybe you should concentrate more on your own obvious bad habits before judging everyone else.
@Denis Ryan: It doesn’t need to be”watching” These are everyday occurrences,even the amount of drivers with one light missing,beams too high,tail lights out of action. These can be caught very quickly and drivers fined very easily at a simple night time road check. Curb your own aggression before you jump to attacking others. I hope you don’t drive on the road the same way as you speak
@Larry Betts: ” a simple night time road check” any particular roads at any particular night time hour, do enlighten everyone on your simple solution to rt’s in our country.
@Denis Ryan: You can drive any road in the country when it’s dark and within 10 or 15 minutes you will meet a dozen cars or more with faulty lights. A simple roadside check by Gardai can see this and stop the cars. Simple. A bit like yourself. Lights dim? Ditto
@Larry Betts: so you drive around lots of roads after dark to see how many vehicles have faulty lights, you must be a barrel of laughs to live with
LMFAO
Low law enforcement (speed cameras are not proper enforcement), poor driver education and testing standards, poor roads and road engineering. You address these and things will improve, if you don’t, they won’t and unfortunately people will pay very dearly indeed.
@Pat Maher: it’s poor behaviour that has to be the main driver. Driving too close, undertaking, mobile phone use etc. Until there is proper enforcement it’ll keep getting worse!
@Pat Maher: I agree, and checkpoints aren’t the answer either, there need to be dedicated patrols, more visibility of Gardai, and not this focusing on revenue generation
@Pat Maher: Agree. I’m not sure why they can not use drones to patrol the roads. The tech is there.
Of course it will increase, there are hundreds of thousands of people coming into the country every year.
@Irish Axe: What has that got to do with the sharp rise in RTAs?
@Irish Axe: You’re mistaken – loads of Irish people have forgotten how to drive. Every week I see some drivers looking normal as anything but they drive as if they’ve just borrowed a car after being 5 years off the roads. I’d be embarrassed to ride a bike the way some of us are driving around. Jumping like bunnies along perfectly resurfaced roads in dry weather.
Is anyone surprised by this when you consider that most EU countries have a policy of “No full Licence, No driving. Period!”? This perpetual “provisional licence” fiasco needs to come to an end in Ireland.
@Happynappy: most EU countries have a proper infrastructure to get people licensed as quickly as possible.
Let’s say it loud for the Government to hear. ENFORCEMENT ENFORCEMENT ENFORCEMENT. Not speed cameras, lots of Garda cars visible on our roads.
@Jason Walsh: Cameras and a digital system would be better and probs far cheaper in the long run… It’s maybe a bit ‘fancy’ for us Irish tho
@Jason Walsh: you do realise “lots of garda cars” need to be manned. where do think they will come from? Not nearly enough garda as it is.
The standard of driving recently (but especially since Covid) is appalling. No patience anymore, a lot of anger. Lots of poor vehicle condition (lots of cars with lights out etc), and a lot of speeding and phone use. You see the phone use at every junction and lights. Eyes down every time they stop for even a second, like a drug to them. Need far more enforcement to know they’ll get caught, and also fixing up of roads, and provision of more active travel infrastructure to protect vulnerable road users. But people need to take responsibility too. Slow down, have patience, leave the phone alone, don’t take a drink, and look after your vehicle.
@Andrew Donohoe: I see just as much phone use (eyes down) when cars are moving as when stopped at the lights. No fear of enforcement, what’s going to stop them?
And don’t get me started on faulty lights (one fog light on the offside and one headlamp on the nearside, anyone?) or on those clowns with fog lights 24/7. And the lack of indicators in roundabouts, are indicators an option on some cars?
@Andrew Donohoe: 2 hours to travel 20kms is not acceptable, you can preach all you want but thats a powder-keg situation.
@Jerry LeFrog: oh yeah absolutely. Meant even when just walking, and you can see they’re not observing others around then. But yeah you see that too when driving. They cannot keep off phones. Agree there too. They simply don’t look after lights, just shows they’re unaware of their car and looking after it. No indicators a huge issue
@Thesaltyurchin: I don’t get your point. Does that mean they’re allowed act the way they want on the roads?
@Andrew Donohoe: it doesn’t make sense, I think I replied to the wrong post
@Andrew Donohoe: no, but it’s a factor that cause more aggressive driving
People will blame road type, speed limits, enforcement etc but it’s the a$$ behind the wheel that’s the issue. Drivers seem to have some false ownership right to the road and their journey will always trump the other road users journey. You don’t have to travel too far to see someone drive like an a$$
@David O’Connor: I absolutely agree with you. Anyone who drives any distance in this country will see appalling driving. Had a lucky escape last week with an N driver, who thought it was perfectly acceptable to come off a slip road onto the motorway and go straight over into the right lane. When I blew the horn at them, their answer was to give me the finger.
@Gillian OCoinne: Other peoples perception. Do we trust it? nope.
Would this phenomenon have anything to do with the lack of investment in our roads infrastructure. Antiquated roadways, single carriageways. Bad corners, bad camber, diabolical surfaces, bad signage, bad or no road markings, ditches not cut, dangerous junctions, reduced lighting to conform with Green agenda.
Other issues also contribute but a lack of maintenance and vision from the Green movement have made our roads a dangerous place to be.
Pushing cyclists on to our rural roads network is disgraceful. People are cycling on roads with blind corners,no hard shoulder in case of emergency. As the country has progressed and population increases, Eamon has cut investment in roads. But put zero alternatives in place. Would any of this have anything to do with the issues we are dealing with, I wonder??
@Max Cooper: All of these were issues before covid already.
You have the jump after covid. It is the behaviour that changed across the board, motorists, cyclists and pedestrians.
@Max Cooper: Definitely the largest contributing factor are the people we ‘hired’ to maintain these systems, they have proven themselves incapable of implementing anything since the luas. Nothing has changed in 20 years. No plan, not a single idea, these situations build over generations, it’s not bad now because of any sudden reason, it’s been building to this point for years and will continue to get worse because the planning that was needed 10 years ago to deal with it, never happened… Here are the people that should be directly blamed:
Eamonn Ryan
Shane Ross
Paschal Donohoe
Leo Varadkar
Noel Dempsey
Martin Cullen
Seamus Brennan
The go safe vans were allegedly brought in to carry out speed checks on accident black spots, back roads and minor roads where the majority of accidents occur. Of course this been Ireland, the powers that be, see them as a cash cow, and instead we now find them on dual carriageways, motorways etc., basically roads where very few major accidents occur. So the people making these decisions have blood on their hands.
Is it anything to do with the number of foreign nationals now living here? Most would be used to driving on the opposite side of the road. Different driving cultures too. It is also so was to obtain a licence and to start driving here.
Another note is the amount of people not paying attention to the road by using phones. Most car recovery truck drivers are always on the phone not using hands free. There are a scary amount of drivers texting and on their phones daily.
Is it any wonder? Speed cameras and Gardai only on national roads or motorways and people racing as fast as they can on regional roads. I do a 12 mile round trip every morning on a regional road and some of the over taking that goes on is unbelievable and usually by the same drivers and not all young lads, the biggest culprit is a woman with a car full of children who needs to pass every car in front of her for some reason…
The state of the roads. White lines are gone road markings are a joke. Send half what is going into cycle lanes they would be better off
@Patrick Deasy: are you serious? They already spent next to nothing on cycle lanes, and so much more on roads. Did you miss the part of the article where it mentions incidents to cyclists rising? They nerd more not less. Jeez…
All Roads in Rural Ireland are left in a terrible condition…..Black Spots left not rectified.. dangerous bends and surfaces in most areas.grass verges never cut
RSA and Government never mention this ….WONDER WHY
@Thomas Howley: Its shocking, if your vehicle cant fit on the road with another then you shouldn’t be allowed on the road, simple as. Roads need to be widened and a proper route based system needs to be address countrywide. Do you imagine this basic common sense has ever been even mentioned? I really doubt it.
Anyone who uses the road needs to show personal responsibility including motorists, cyclists, electric scooters and pedestrians when crossing the road. The motorist gets the blame for all road deaths which is simply not the case.
Driving standards have gone to hell since the pandemic. I think the Broken Windows Theory would apply here – enforce the law, automatically and technologically. There should be cameras on all traffic lights, bus lanes, buses. Average speed cameras on motorways. More random drug testing, especially of young male drivers. Enforce the laws on car modifications. Get drivers used to slowing down and obeying the law.
Newer cars tend to have higher ncap safety rating, with the masses price increase in new cars (thanks Brexit) I wonder is there a coralation between fatalities and the safety of the vehicle itself. Maybe you are equally likely to crash elsewhere but are more likely to survive because your in a 5 star ncap car. Article isn’t clear but if cyclist deaths is the main driver of the increase, stricter laws and enforcement required for cyclist safety, should be a legal requirement for helmets and lights front and rear and big fines for failure to comply. Additionally delivery driver PPE should include reflective boxes on their backs!
@Noel McGivern: totally agree. The amount of cyclists and pedestrians with zero visibility is shocking.
@Noel McGivern: firstly it’s you’re not your for you are , secondly bad drivers do risk equalisation , for example when seatbelts came in people drove faster because they felt “safer ” so for bad drivers there was no net decrease in deaths as they equalised the risk .no matter how advanced your car safety features the laws of physics still apply
@Noel McGivern: Thanks Brexit?… Cars cost a fortune here because of Irish people. The car market in the UK is amazing right now, the same car here is often 20k more, we have no access to because the government (our government) wants it that way.
Stop hiding in bushes to make revenue
@Ciaran Goggins: I think “hiding in bushes” is actually a good approach. How else will you catch ignorant drivers?
It’s easy to avoid fines – you just have to follow the rules of the road.
Hogging the road doing 60 in a 100 zone leads to frustration for the queue that forms behind and then the rat race to overtake begins. Tractors at 35 on same road causes same. I have even seen tractors at 35 on the motorway…..Rural road surfaces are a thundering disgrace But you wont see Eamo or his cronies using them in D4
@Michael James Brennan: The road hog is the most underestimated hazard on the road.
@Michael James Brennan: If the road surface is a disgrace………. slow down. And tractors are not renowned for their speed.
Although bad driving and lack of enforcement is everywhere (red lights for instance), the anti-car policies are frustrating drivers and contributing also. Narrow lanes, tiny roundabouts, badly sequenced lights, bus lanes, repeated bumps etc all contribute to frustration and delays, and more troubling unduly excess traffic where drivers take more risks. Scrap the green agenda where it compromises safety and traffic flow. I fear this will all be used as a green stick to beat us all with though.
On the continent there is a police presence on the streets and highways, which must act as a deterrent to dangerous driving. On the rare occasion one sees gardai here, they’re usually in a car!
@Brian Hunt: and speeding themselves
As a cyclist and driver all I can say is no surprise there then! 3 times in the last week I have seen drivers been forced into the hard shoulder by mind-numbingly dangerous over-taking manoeuvres.
People are broke af. Everything is crazy expensive and at every junction theres and ‘Irish law’ that makes it 20% more expensive than everywhere else… just ‘because’. What’s the point of trying when they’re just gonna take 50% back, add to that the lack of infrastructure and the zero planning in terms of logistics on the roads, particularly during commuter times and it’s really no surprise. There’s a lot of anger out their right now, so be wary when you call for ‘patience’… you almost deserve the middle finger you’re going to get back.
We still have one of the lowest road fatality rates in Europe, which is a miracle considering the state of the roads and lack of enforcement. This though is just a cynical effort from the greens to reduce speed limits to get cars off the road. People abiding by the present speed limits seldom cause accidents
Mind you, I was waiting for a bus from Blackrock & that road from town is destroyed with speeding cars. I’ve never seen such reckless driving. None of them were slowing to get to the hospital either, they shot past.
Fix our roads
Build decent infrastructure
Fire Cabbage Head
Save lives
@Max Cooper: Drive safely. Moderate your driving dependent on driving conditions. Slow down and keep beliw speed limits. Put away your phone.
Roads are worse than the have been ever. No investment, no plan. 2 hours on the M7 yesterday, truck and a car had a sh@t attack, dunno why is freight transport is allowed on our roads during commuter traffic, it’s just stupid, but the reality is there is no one at the wheel (pun intended). The Minster for transport only has eyes for the 2km area where tourists make up the majority of the population. Hold your politicians accountable, ask them what has been done in Transport for the last 20 years?… they wont be able to answer you.
Indicators are only to be used at xmas time to cheer us all up and pesdestrian crossings are for playing human skittles. Roundabouts are for slingshotting in random directions.
@bruce banner: At least we have roundabouts! I was up in Northern Ireland where they have painted circles on the roads!
It’s not just about enforcement that is badly needed to be improved. The present Driving Test is also not fit for driving in the 21st century. Learners are no longer allowed to drive by themselves yet they can go in and pass tge test and immediately be allowed out on their own. Ridiculous. They are also not permitted to travel on motorways as a learner. Yet again, as soon as they pass they can use then without any real idea as to how to drive on them. The whole thing needs to be revamped.
@karen delaney: Eh the whole idea of a driving test is to see if you’re able to drive.
So if you pass the test you’re able to drive.
What would you suggest, two tests?
@Bert Carolan: our driving test is not a test of ability to drive. It’s a test of ability to… pass a test. There’s a world of a difference….
@Bert Carolan: No, I can see her point – there are plenty of drivers out there who have never been on a motorway and they’re circling roundabouts like lost souls ;-)
@karen delaney: Do driving instructors not take people onto motorways? I was assuming that’s part of the prep but maybe not.
Plenty Garda enforcement, drunk driving, driving under the influence of drugs, speeding, using mobile phone , thousands of cases coming before the courts every week, read the newspaper.
Reason deaths on the road are rising is poor drive behaviour and attitudes among men, and especially young men
@Peter Byrne: Exactly.
@Peter Byrne: All that ism true but poor and insufficient infrastructure is the big thing. We had twice as many deaths when we had half as many vehicles. All important routes should be dual carriageway as they are many times safer than two lane roads. Ryan hasn’t a clue.
yes we do have a good motor way network these days. But our local roads are heavily congested our population has increased our public transportation is terrible. We have so many new comers with different driving ethic. People are commuting longer distances, working longer, more under pressure with cost of living etc… all these factors lead to increases. Not for getting new cars it very hard to tell the speed you going till you have to react. Plus new cars i personally find the driver assist the auto steering correct can really throw you off on some of our roads.
@Be Lucky: Local roads are busy in some cases due to people avoiding the tolls – Drogheda is a prime example
@Tony Humphreys: True, and that’s local people bypassing toll roads. In fairness, not a crime. But unless you know the back roads well, it is a bit unnerving.
Are we supposed to be surprised, pub Carpark’s full at nighttime, not a guard in sight. Drink and drug driving is rampant
I’ll say this again, no actual consequences, no change. Unless the use of mobile phones is dealt with by way of loss of licence for 6 months on a first offence and automatic resitting of driving test along with a drivers education course and an R [ RESTRICTED plate ] on your car for 12 months afterwards, nothing will change.
Same should be done for drink driving , the law is pathetically weak.
Make everybody walk, lets slow down and smell the roses were only here on this beautiful planet once.
It might be helpful to have an age breakdown of the deaths.I drive for a living and I see speeding drivers,no indicators,driving while on a mobile and elderly people doing awful things while driving.Sort this and the stats might improve.
Phone use while driving is out of control, young drivers especially bad, we were driving behind a car on M7 recently and there was a lad watching Netflix(seen logo) on a phone on the dash he was weaving across the lanes, we flashed him and we got the finger
@geoff waters: Okay, but I once wrote programmes for an insurance company and statistically, it’s middle aged men who are the worst drivers. Maybe they’re going through the change and cars aren’t engineered for werewolves?
On the m50 Northbound at 1030 this morning a car doing 60km a hour in the middle lane. Absolutely shocking driving. Also indicators don’t exist
Stop telling learner drivers to drive it on. The examiners expect max speed on the road. Most killed are young drivers who have no comprehension of the roads they drive on. A lot of roads are not suitable for max speeds. Teach responsible driving by respecting the roads that they travel on.
We need better roads. Go look at French roads – they’re perfect. Eamo doesn’t want anymore investment in roads – this is the result.
“rising fastest” – yes, examine the figures, we are still 3rd lowest in the EU.
I’m surprised we have more deaths than Southern Europeans. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Italy or Malta but the people are absolute lunatics on the road without a regard for anything. Wow, must be a method to there madness all along! lol
Pointless discussing this without any disclosure and publishing of detailed RTA data. Fine-tune to say 100 parameters per category and start figuring out who, where, when, why and how.
THEN have discussions.
have your say