Man and woman die in separate road crashes

TWO people have been killed in separate crashes on our roads over the past two days.

A man in his 40s died yesterday morning when the car he was driving collided with another car shortly before 9am on the N80 on Summons Mill Cross Road in Co. Laois.

A woman and a child in the second vehicle suffered minor injuries in the incident and were taken to Portlaoise General Hospital and Crumlin Hospital in Dublin, respectively.

In a separate incident around 12 hours earlier, a 68-year-old woman was killed when the car she was driving collided with two other vehicles 20km outside Roscommon town.

The three-vehicle accident happened at about 9.45pm on Monday at Ballinaboy, on the N63 Lanesboro to Roscommon road.

The woman was pronounced dead at the scene and her body was taken to the mortuary at Roscommon University Hospital.

The drivers in the other two cars were injured in the crash and were brought to the Ballinasloe and Tullamore hospitals. Last night, their injuries were not believed to be life threatening. Gardaí are appealing for witnesses to both road accidents to come forward.

The latest deaths bring the number of people killed on our roads so far this year to 122, which is a decrease of eight fatalities from the same time period last year.

So far this year, drivers have made up the majority of deaths in road incidents, followed by pedestrians and passengers.

Irish roads were the fourth safest in the EU last year, according to the European Transport Safety Council.

However, the Road Safety Authority here has said that the country still has a long way to go in order to achieve its goal of reducing annual fatalities to 124 or less by 2020.