Significantly more young people are being killed on the Republic’s roads this year and gardaí have appealed for passengers in vehicles to try to influence dangerous driver behaviour when they see it.
Assistant Commissioner Paula Hilman, who is in charge of roads policing, added drug driving remained a serious issue, with most of the drivers caught having consumed cannabis and cocaine. Furthermore, three counties – Galway, Mayo and Cork – accounted for almost a third of all fatalities on the Republic’s roads.
Ms Hillman was speaking as the Garda launched its bank holiday road safety enforcement campaign, which is being extended an additional 24 hours this year to run until 7am on Wednesday.
Ms Hilman said road deaths this year were ahead of last year and had already reached 100, an increase of 11 on this time last year. With a weather warning also in place for the first half of the bank holiday weekend, she urged drivers to slow down.
“What has happened this week, the sad and tragic collision in Clones on Monday night, is very much on our mind and I think it has brought to the fore the really personal impact and tragedy we see from deaths on our roads,” she said of the crash that claimed the lives of best friends Kiea McCann (17) and Dlava Mohamed (16) on their way to a debs ball in Monaghan town.
Ms Hilman said: “Our thoughts and sympathies are very much with the families of Kiea and Dlava” as well as their families, friends and relatives.
“We are, unfortunately, seeing an increase in the number of young people killed on the roads this year, with 23 young people between the ages of 16 and 25 killed,” she said, which was almost the same number of young people killed in the first half of 2021 and 2022 combined, at 26.
Ms Hilman added not all of those young people killed were drivers in the vehicles that crashed. Instead, “quite a number were passengers” and “as a passenger if you can influence any of the driver behaviours yourself please do so”.
She added teams of gardaí would be out in numbers this weekend as part of the special bank holiday enforcement operation. It began on Thursday night when 25 drivers were caught drink or drug driving. The “key message” was for drivers to slow down and not become distracted, and to be more aware of cyclists, pedestrians and motorcyclists.
As it was a bank holiday weekend, some of the “high-risk times” on the roads included Friday evening and Monday and Tuesday, when people were travelling to and from holiday destinations. While most drivers caught drink driving were generally detected between midnight and 3am, drug driving was detected at all times. Garda now had new “drug wipes”, which were used to test for indicative traces of drugs in a driver’s system.
Asked whether the Garda had the personnel required for a major operation this weekend, amid falling numbers, Ms Hilman conceded the force was “below the numbers that we need” but trecruitment was now well under way.
In general, 49 per cent of road deaths occurred between 8pm and 8am, despite the fact it was the quietest time on the roads. In the first half of the year, gardaí have carried out 24,000 mandatory intoxication checkpoints – with testing for alcohol and drugs – while 3,900 drivers had been detected driving while intoxicated. Some 77,500 fixed-charge notices had been issued for speeding.
