Don’t we allow people on the road without driving test?
bathtubsplashes on
Easy to happen when your original numbers were one of the lowest in europe
Spursious_Caeser on
The RSA refuses to share crash data and there is an unhealthy focus on speed as the main cause of accidents.
Obviously, speed is a factor, but wouldn’t the type of cars driven also have an impact? If you hit someone in a VW Golf and you’re driving one of those Ford Ranger monstrosities, I can’t see it going well for the Golf driver, for example…
Dr-Jellybaby on
Jesus this story keeps getting blown out of proportion. We already had record low road deaths so any increase looks huge with measuring proportional change. We still have lower road deaths than almost every other European country.
If the trend continues past this year then it starts becoming a bigger issue but getting riled up over a single data point isn’t a good idea.
slevinonion on
Well we started at the lowest (almost worldwide), so it’s all relative. We’re still one of the top safest in the world.
In the last few years we have a massive lack of enforcement of anything, hundreds of thousands of new population, many of which didn’t go through Irish testing system, poor public transport system, drink problems and these issues are visible on the road. We’re lowering all the local road speed limits to 60kph in a few weeks too.
Due_Evidence on
This must be correlated to the fact that so many drivers are on their phones while driving. Motorways, narrow 80kmh roads, wherever the hell you come across them. Can’t even count the times that I almost head on collision due to that bullshit. Really needs to be addressed properly for once and for all. And yes you do see that in other countries too, but fuck me it’s crazier in Ireland for some reason it seems.
Locko2020 on
The excuses rife in the comments from the 90% of drivers who think they’re an above average driver.
There are multiple people in every line of traffic on their phone. Death isn’t the only horrible result from bad driving. The only reason it’s not more is that traffic in Dublin prevents cars getting to too high speeds.
Louth_Mouth on
There is a Somali woman on our street she can neither read or speak English, drive safely , reverse, she crashed into one of my neighbours and damaged another in the space of a fortnight, yet she has a full Irish driving license.
PremiumTempus on
Meanwhile there are over 400 people killed by drug overdoses every year and 1000 premature deaths per year as a result conditions caused by air pollution. Why does this much smaller issue get so much more attention?
ZimnyKefir on
I took M50 last Sunday to IKEA. Plenty of idiots hurrying me up with head lights, just because I was over taking other car with speed of relevant limit.
Junior-Protection-26 on
“The figures illustrated how Ireland was one of just six countries within the bloc that saw an increase in their road fatalities, but most of those recorded a single-digit increase, far below Ireland’s 31pc jump. The EU as a whole saw an 11pc decrease in the same timeframe.”
Lack of policing on our roads. Drivers on the phone. Speeding. Coked up goons behind the wheel.
No surprise.
oddun on
It’s phones. Every second car on the road has someone on their phone while driving.
Anecdotally, it became way worse when the lockdowns ended and everyone returned to the road. People got addicted to reels and TikTok while stuck in the house and they’ve brought that to the streets!
Was stuck behind a car going way under the speed limit forcing everyone to pass them out, and lo and behold, jabbering away on a video call.
Unlikely_Ad6219 on
Quick!! Let’s add some electric cars to the massively overloaded system!!
It’s the only solution. More cars has to be the solution, surely.
Leavser1 on
Failing to invest in the roads is having a major impact on the quality and standard of non motorway roads.
Cars have gotten bigger yet we haven’t increased our road sizes to keep pace with these increases (a few of the newer road upgrades have made the roads smaller?!)
Who’d have thought that not keeping the roads in good shape would have an impact?
MBMD13 on
+35%. Absolute bottom of the heap. Scandalous.
calimcginley on
The RSA needs to release detailed, anonymous data on the causes of road fatalities to better inform the public and drive policy changes. While many believe we overcame issues like seat belt usage and drink driving in the 90s, these problems are resurfacing alongside new threats like mobile phone use, prescription drug abuse, and other illicit substances.
Recent tragic accidents involving multiple passengers seem to suggest that seat belt usage is still being neglected. One passenger not wearing a belt in a full car can fatality injure everyone else in a crash not impacted by speed.
Another alarming factor is the impact of our cost-cutting culture. Many drivers prioritize the cheapest options for car maintenance and tyres, which has serious consequences for road safety. The difference between premium-brand tyres and the €35-a-corner budget tyres is significant. Cheap tyres, often made with hard rubber, drastically reduce grip and performance. In fact, a set of premium part-worn tyres can be safer than brand-new budget ones. It’s time to introduce higher safety standards for tyres and remove these substandard options from the market.
SpyderDM on
Bigger and bigger cars being driven… what did people expect would happen?
jools4you on
What I experience on rural roads now as apposed to 10 years ago is massive cars, whose drivers refuse to drive near the verge because they don’t want to get their car scratched. The rise of these massive vehicle must make a difference to the number of crashes, they are just to wide for irish roads. Plus drivers who are not capable of driving them, they still think their in a ford fiesta.
PoppedCork on
Those adverts are working well so
hopefulatwhatido on
Made the mistake of opening the comments on Twitter for this post
Critical_Water_4567 on
So extremely high insurance rates and speed vans aren’t doing their job…. Or their jobs are too make money and not to save life’s.
knutterjohn on
How many of the fatalities were caused by people sitting on their seatbelts rather than wearing them. We still have a culture here in rural Ireland of people disregarding safety equipment in cars.
AdventurousRevenue90 on
People’s health issues plays into it, alot of symptoms mimicking closed brain injuries going around, people are more medicated than they used to be a few years ago
Apprehensive_Ratio80 on
I’m not surprised!
loobricated on
Some of the stuff I see on the roads is completely insane. I was sitting behind a bin lorry last week on a country road and it stopped outside a house, but I couldn’t safely overtake because the lorry was on the brow of a hill and a turn in a 60mph road. So I just waited as a line grew behind me. A guy in a van three cars back just accelerated to overtook 4 vehicles at high speed on wrong side of the road with zero vision on what was coming. A car could easily have been coming at high speed on the other side leading to an utterly catastrophic crash. Thankfully that didn’t happen but the sheer recklessness of it utterly astounded me. A family could have been wiped out by this idiots impatience.
xINEVITABLE_BACONx on
Value of human life is very low on Irish roads. People don’t care if you die, not at all.
rabbidasseater on
Spacial awareness is the biggest problem I can see on roads atm. Slalom course should be introduced to the test.
das_punter on
Lack of Garda being arsed with anything to do with traffic is a major issue. People aren’t afraid to use their phones, use bus lanes, speed, break red lights – whatever takes your fancy – the chances of repercussions for breaking road laws are slim.
TurkeyPigFace on
A lot of people just don’t seem to care as much since the lockdown. A lot more aggressive driving, an increasing population and a lack of Gardaí on the roads was always going to lead to more deaths but the scale is overblown in the media.
Sything on
Yup, a ridiculous amount of people that tailgate, don’t signal (or signal only as they begin turning), fog lights being left on consistently and just a general lack of care and respect towards others on the road by blatantly ignoring signs and rules like not parking at junctions/turns.
Personally I find the worse part about this time of year is the sheer amount of people leaving their fog lights on, some go as far as leaving them on by default and drive around in the morning with them blaring too, I do my best to not assume the worse of people, give a small friendly reminder of a flash when I see it in oncoming traffic (or a flash of hazards when it’s behind me) but I’ve had some people just flash black then leave them on like they’re letting me know it’s intentional.
30 Comments
Don’t we allow people on the road without driving test?
Easy to happen when your original numbers were one of the lowest in europe
The RSA refuses to share crash data and there is an unhealthy focus on speed as the main cause of accidents.
Obviously, speed is a factor, but wouldn’t the type of cars driven also have an impact? If you hit someone in a VW Golf and you’re driving one of those Ford Ranger monstrosities, I can’t see it going well for the Golf driver, for example…
Jesus this story keeps getting blown out of proportion. We already had record low road deaths so any increase looks huge with measuring proportional change. We still have lower road deaths than almost every other European country.
If the trend continues past this year then it starts becoming a bigger issue but getting riled up over a single data point isn’t a good idea.
Well we started at the lowest (almost worldwide), so it’s all relative. We’re still one of the top safest in the world.
In the last few years we have a massive lack of enforcement of anything, hundreds of thousands of new population, many of which didn’t go through Irish testing system, poor public transport system, drink problems and these issues are visible on the road. We’re lowering all the local road speed limits to 60kph in a few weeks too.
This must be correlated to the fact that so many drivers are on their phones while driving. Motorways, narrow 80kmh roads, wherever the hell you come across them. Can’t even count the times that I almost head on collision due to that bullshit. Really needs to be addressed properly for once and for all. And yes you do see that in other countries too, but fuck me it’s crazier in Ireland for some reason it seems.
The excuses rife in the comments from the 90% of drivers who think they’re an above average driver.
There are multiple people in every line of traffic on their phone. Death isn’t the only horrible result from bad driving. The only reason it’s not more is that traffic in Dublin prevents cars getting to too high speeds.
There is a Somali woman on our street she can neither read or speak English, drive safely , reverse, she crashed into one of my neighbours and damaged another in the space of a fortnight, yet she has a full Irish driving license.
Meanwhile there are over 400 people killed by drug overdoses every year and 1000 premature deaths per year as a result conditions caused by air pollution. Why does this much smaller issue get so much more attention?
I took M50 last Sunday to IKEA. Plenty of idiots hurrying me up with head lights, just because I was over taking other car with speed of relevant limit.
“The figures illustrated how Ireland was one of just six countries within the bloc that saw an increase in their road fatalities, but most of those recorded a single-digit increase, far below Ireland’s 31pc jump. The EU as a whole saw an 11pc decrease in the same timeframe.”
Lack of policing on our roads. Drivers on the phone. Speeding. Coked up goons behind the wheel.
No surprise.
It’s phones. Every second car on the road has someone on their phone while driving.
Anecdotally, it became way worse when the lockdowns ended and everyone returned to the road. People got addicted to reels and TikTok while stuck in the house and they’ve brought that to the streets!
Was stuck behind a car going way under the speed limit forcing everyone to pass them out, and lo and behold, jabbering away on a video call.
Quick!! Let’s add some electric cars to the massively overloaded system!!
It’s the only solution. More cars has to be the solution, surely.
Failing to invest in the roads is having a major impact on the quality and standard of non motorway roads.
Cars have gotten bigger yet we haven’t increased our road sizes to keep pace with these increases (a few of the newer road upgrades have made the roads smaller?!)
Who’d have thought that not keeping the roads in good shape would have an impact?
+35%. Absolute bottom of the heap. Scandalous.
The RSA needs to release detailed, anonymous data on the causes of road fatalities to better inform the public and drive policy changes. While many believe we overcame issues like seat belt usage and drink driving in the 90s, these problems are resurfacing alongside new threats like mobile phone use, prescription drug abuse, and other illicit substances.
Recent tragic accidents involving multiple passengers seem to suggest that seat belt usage is still being neglected. One passenger not wearing a belt in a full car can fatality injure everyone else in a crash not impacted by speed.
Another alarming factor is the impact of our cost-cutting culture. Many drivers prioritize the cheapest options for car maintenance and tyres, which has serious consequences for road safety. The difference between premium-brand tyres and the €35-a-corner budget tyres is significant. Cheap tyres, often made with hard rubber, drastically reduce grip and performance. In fact, a set of premium part-worn tyres can be safer than brand-new budget ones. It’s time to introduce higher safety standards for tyres and remove these substandard options from the market.
Bigger and bigger cars being driven… what did people expect would happen?
What I experience on rural roads now as apposed to 10 years ago is massive cars, whose drivers refuse to drive near the verge because they don’t want to get their car scratched. The rise of these massive vehicle must make a difference to the number of crashes, they are just to wide for irish roads. Plus drivers who are not capable of driving them, they still think their in a ford fiesta.
Those adverts are working well so
Made the mistake of opening the comments on Twitter for this post
So extremely high insurance rates and speed vans aren’t doing their job…. Or their jobs are too make money and not to save life’s.
How many of the fatalities were caused by people sitting on their seatbelts rather than wearing them. We still have a culture here in rural Ireland of people disregarding safety equipment in cars.
People’s health issues plays into it, alot of symptoms mimicking closed brain injuries going around, people are more medicated than they used to be a few years ago
I’m not surprised!
Some of the stuff I see on the roads is completely insane. I was sitting behind a bin lorry last week on a country road and it stopped outside a house, but I couldn’t safely overtake because the lorry was on the brow of a hill and a turn in a 60mph road. So I just waited as a line grew behind me. A guy in a van three cars back just accelerated to overtook 4 vehicles at high speed on wrong side of the road with zero vision on what was coming. A car could easily have been coming at high speed on the other side leading to an utterly catastrophic crash. Thankfully that didn’t happen but the sheer recklessness of it utterly astounded me. A family could have been wiped out by this idiots impatience.
Value of human life is very low on Irish roads. People don’t care if you die, not at all.
Spacial awareness is the biggest problem I can see on roads atm. Slalom course should be introduced to the test.
Lack of Garda being arsed with anything to do with traffic is a major issue. People aren’t afraid to use their phones, use bus lanes, speed, break red lights – whatever takes your fancy – the chances of repercussions for breaking road laws are slim.
A lot of people just don’t seem to care as much since the lockdown. A lot more aggressive driving, an increasing population and a lack of Gardaí on the roads was always going to lead to more deaths but the scale is overblown in the media.
Yup, a ridiculous amount of people that tailgate, don’t signal (or signal only as they begin turning), fog lights being left on consistently and just a general lack of care and respect towards others on the road by blatantly ignoring signs and rules like not parking at junctions/turns.
Personally I find the worse part about this time of year is the sheer amount of people leaving their fog lights on, some go as far as leaving them on by default and drive around in the morning with them blaring too, I do my best to not assume the worse of people, give a small friendly reminder of a flash when I see it in oncoming traffic (or a flash of hazards when it’s behind me) but I’ve had some people just flash black then leave them on like they’re letting me know it’s intentional.