AS I SEE IT
BY MARIANNE HERON
The news comes like an electric shock for me as another car crash adds to the growing toll of road fatalities. It’s a grim score –with 30 deaths already after just two and a half months this year, the latest involving a passenger who died in a single vehicle collision in West Dublin, a report ironically under the heading Road Safety in one newspaper.
The numbers are climbing, despite the Road Safety Authority’s aim to reduce the number of road deaths in the Republic to 72 by 2030, and despite the introduction of lower speed limits designed to reduce the risk of accidents. The figures are going in the opposite direction, though, last year there were 190 deaths; the total for all of Ireland was 247.
The reactions to these tragedies are predictably the same, with local communities numbed by shock and grief over loved ones lost, particularly young lives. And a disproportionate number of the fatalities involve young people aged between 16 -25, especially young men. Since 2019, 20% have involved 16-25 year olds although they only represent 12% of the population, 80% of these were males.
While we don’t have the worst record in Europe, our rate is 35 road deaths per million compared with the European average of 45, (Norway has the lowest rate at 16). Ours is the only rate which is getting worse, so what is pushing up the fatal accident rate? Is it our drivers or our roads?
“Road deaths in Ireland have risen 31% since 2017 while the EU average has fallen by 12%,” says business economist, formerly at Harvard Business School, Sinead O’Sullivan, who launched the Stop Road Deaths this year. “The reason isn’t mysterious. Ireland is one of the only developed countries without a functioning speed camera network, without mandatory crash investigation and without a single person accountable for delivering its only road safety targets,” Sinead claims. “We know exactly what works because Norway Sweden and Finland have proved it. Ireland has simply chosen not to do it.”
In fact, Ireland does have 1,901 automated speed enforcement zones, monitored by high visibility vans and also fixed average speed cameras. Gardai also carry out detailed reports on accident scenes. Some areas are more accident prone.
On a county by county basis Fermanagh 12, Mayo 11, Donegal 12 Armagh 16 and Tipperary 13 have the highest number of deaths per capita for their populations, although Dublin 22 has the highest total number due to the size of population.
Kilkenny with four is one of the counties with the lowest number.
Fatal accidents are most likely to happen on local and regional roads which are the responsibility of local authorities who look after 94% of Irelands road networks. In theory it should be possible to pin down local accident blackspots and to look at the causes of fatal crashes but this can’t be done.
“Specific high-risk route data is not publicly available because the RSA stopped sharing collision location data with local authorities in 2020 and all historical data was removed from the mapping system in November 2023. This means Ireland’s road engineers currently cannot see where crashes are happening on the roads they manage,” states the Stop Road Deaths Campaign. In other words, the detailed information which would allow county engineers to take remedial action isn’t there.
The RSA stopped sharing the information due to legal concerns over General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). According to the RSA, driver error is the biggest cause of road accidents in 80% of cases with speed, drink or drug driving, distraction due to mobile phones and not wearing seat belts as the main contributory factors.
Ireland could take a leaf from Norway’s book where their Vision Zero policy aims to have zero road deaths by 2050. Among the measures to reduce fatalities are median barriers in the centre of roads to prevent head-on collisions, which wouldn’t be possible on many winding minor roads here. There are strict speed and alcohol rules and infrastructure to protect cyclists and pedestrians. Among the Stop Road Deaths’ demands are a statutory Road Safety Commissioner, mandatory black spot redesigns and reversal of enforcement collapse.
Maybe the answer to accident prevention lies in the future with autonomous cars, ruling out driver error and speeding with cars that refuse to budge for intoxicated or mobile using drivers. More power to cars!
