Ireland’s rural road deaths level 3rd in EU
■ Youngsters make 30% of our terrible road death toll in 2024 ■ Garda, top doc, TD & RSA chief on how the carnage can be stopped
IRELAND has the third highest level of deaths on rural roads in the EU with more than twothirds of all road fatalities occurring outside built-up areas and motorways.
A new report by the European Transport Safety Council shows 67 per cent of all road deaths in the Republic between 2020 and 2022 were on rural roads compared to the EU average of 52 per cent over the same period.
Fatalities
Only Finland and Sweden have a higher proportion of all road fatalities on rural roads.
The ETSC report also revealed that average speeds on rural roads in Ireland have been increasing in recent years at a time when reductions in average speeds have been observed on similar roads in many other EU member states including France and Austria.
The report showed that around 10,000 people were killed on rural roads excluding motorways in the EU in 2022.
It also highlighted that just 22 per cent of motorists in Ireland were travelling within the speed limit on rural roads with a 50kph limit in 2022 with the compliance rate increasing to 75 per cent on rural roads with a 100kph limit.
The report comes against a background of growing concern in Ireland at a sharp increase in road deaths in recent years after an extended period where there had been a strong downward trend in fatal collisions.
Increasing
The lowest annual road fatality figure in recent decades was
135 in 2018 but the numbers have started increasing again to reach 188 last year.
A total of 55 people have been killed on Irish roads so far this year.
Figures published by the ETSC show 294 people were killed in collisions on rural roads in Ireland between 2020 and 2022.
NEARLY one in three people killed on Irish roads since the start of the year were aged between 16 and 25, The Star can reveal.
Figures released by the Road Safety Authority show that from January 1 until March 22, 47 road users died – with 30 per cent of those in their teens or early twenties.
More than a quarter of fatalities fell into this age bracket in 2023, up from 16 per cent in 2022.
In January, the country was shocked after three pals — Daryl Culbert (21), Michael Kelly (25), and 19-year-old Katie Graham — were killed after crashing into a tree in Carlow.
Less than two weeks after that, Leah O’Meara, who was just 15, was killed after a horror smash between two cars near Nenagh in Tipperary.
The Star spoke to several experts, including senior gardai, a hospital consultant, and the RSA CEO, about the high number of young fatalities on our roads and what can be done to stop it.
Chief Supt Jane Humphries told us: “Young people unfortunately are in a very high-risk category. Nobody believes that they’re not going to go home that day when they leave that morning. “I think it needs to be the realisation that when you are young you think you’re invisible, that you think it’s not going to happen to you, that you don’t think you’re going to get caught or you’re going to have that collision.
Blame
“What we have to realise is these collisions are happening to young people, they’re happening to young people’s peer groups and they have to understand they’re not invincible.”
When asked if excessive speed or drink and drugdriving was to blame, she said: “Sometimes, it can be one or a combination of all. And sometimes, it can just simply be human error. But when it’s human error and when you are driving slowly and your concentration is on the road, you’re more likely to be able to correct that mistake.”
Prof Conor Deasy, who is an Emergency Medicine Consultant, said many crash victims nowadays are often declared dead at the scene, while others who are brought to hospital have “unsurvivable injuries” and die shortly after they arrive.
The Cork University Hospital doctor said families “live with this trauma, this deep sadness, this emptiness, this loss. This stays with families for a number of generations.”
He added: “Drivers carry precious cargo when they have friends or family in their car; fellow road users are precious to others; the guilt when something goes wrong that drivers live with afterward and the inability to reverse t h e clock is very cruel.”
Prof Deasy said other crash victims end up with brain and spinal injuries which “some would consider as a fate worse than death”.
Independent TD Verona Murphy said the road infrastructure in Ireland has deteriorated and desperately needs to be fixed.
The Wexford deputy and former president of the Irish Road Haulage Association called for stronger enforcement from the Gardai and said that the RSA needs to be more “vocal” when advising the Govern-ment on
what needs to be done.
She said: “The state of the roads is a huge feature. The reason I say that is I’m someone who is a professional driver, and I drive probably around 80,000km a year now, which is a lot less than I used to.
“But for young people who don’t have that experience year on year, the state of the roads can have a huge impact on their driving.
“We have so much money, but yet our road infrastructure is worse now than it was 20 years ago, believe it or not – particularly in Wexford.”
The TD said she believes most road deaths are “preventable”