Calls for urgent action intensify as two men die on Irish roads

Two men in their 20s have become the 62nd and 63rd people to die on Irish roads in 2024.

It means that, on average, someone has been killed on our roads every 36 hours this year.

The two men died in separate incidents in Kerry and Cork.

In Wednesday night’s crash in Kerry, the victim was named locally as Vincent O’Doherty from Listowel.

He was rushed to University Hospital Kerry with critical injuries but died yesterday.

The 20-year-old was from a well-respected family in the north Kerry town.

He was a keen sports fan and a strong supporter of Kerry GAA. Locals said the entire community had been left devastated by the tragedy.

Three other people were injured in the collision, but their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

The second fatal accident happened on the N25 Cork-Waterford road between Midleton and Castlemartyr shortly before 8am yesterday and involved a car and an articulated lorry.

The driver of the car suffered critical injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene, despite efforts by paramedics to save him.

Although he has not yet been named, he was from the locality.

Gardaí have appealed for witnesses to both incidents.

The fatal collision in east Cork was the second there in four days.

A pedestrian in his 40s died last Sunday morning when he was hit by a car as he was walking near Water Rock on the outskirts of Midleton.

Road Safety Authority (RSA) chairperson Liz O’Donnell warned that Ireland cannot tolerate the “level of carnage on the roads”.

Last year was the worst for road deaths in over a decade, but 2024 is on course to prove the most lethal for traffic fatalities in 25 years.

Ms O’Donnell said RSA research has shown “high levels of non-compliance” on the roads, including speeding, use of mobile phones and driving while intoxicated.

“We cannot continue with this level of carnage on the roads,” she said.

“We’re gone back now – it’s the highest in 10 years and we were doing really well internationally. We were the leading lights in road safety.”

The surge in road deaths has coincided with a decline in staff within dedicated garda roads policing units (RPU).

Personnel in these units has fallen by nearly 20pc in the past seven years.

In 2022, garda RPUs had 692 members. That fell to 688 last year and is now down to 627.

The number of people killed on Irish roads so far this year, at 63, is 15 more than the same period in 2023.

Road safety group Promoting Awareness Responsibility and Care on our roads (PARC) has demanded that resources be provided to increase personnel numbers attached to dedicated RPUs.

PARC founder Susan Gray has also called for reform of the driving test, greater driver education and stricter enforcement of road-safety regulations.

She said the increase in road deaths should be treated as a national priority.

“What is worrying is that the fatality numbers have been going in the wrong direction both in 2022 and in 2023,” Ms Gray said.

A coalition of road-safety groups across Ireland warned that the RSA needed to be “fundamentally reformed”.

Last week, the coalition was critical of the RSA, saying it had no confidence in the organisation and that it was “no longer fit for purpose”.

The statement from 26 road-safety groups comes following an interview with the RSA chair on RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne.

Ms O’Donnell said she took issue with the no-confidence statement, and said road-safety “is an all-of-government issue”.

She added that the RSA’s budget was the element of the body that was not fit for purpose.

The road-safety coalition said it wanted additional resources focused on gardaí rather than the RSA.

The group said only 10pc of the €95m received by the RSA in 2022 through driver and vehicle testing was spent on road-safety promotion, awareness and educational programmes.

“We cannot continue with the level of carnage”