Reducing speed limits on some rural roads should be looked at as a way to tackle rising crash death rates, a senior garda has said.
Assistant Commissioner for Roads Policing Paula Hilman said increased garda enforcement would not on its own reduce fatalities, as she stressed the need for more education on road safety.
As of Thursday morning, there had been 125 fatalities on Irish roads so far this year, an increase of 24 compared with the same period in 2022 and 39 more than the same period in 2019.
Around a third of the fatalities in 2023 were among young people under the age of 25.
There have been more than 600 “serious” road collisions so far this year, which means people had suffered life-changing injuries.
Eleven people have died on the roads in the six days from last Friday.
“It has ultimately been one of the most tragic weeks on the roads for a very long time,” Ms Hilman told RTÉ radio’s Today With Claire Byrne show.
The senior officer stressed that investigations into the recent fatalities were ongoing and her comments on road safety were made in general terms, not in relation to the collisions over the last week.
She said speed was a factor in the overall rising death rates in Ireland.
“It’s not people just over the speed limit,” Ms Hilman said.
“If we look at the August bank holiday weekend, I was looking back on that, and we detected over 1,700 people speeding during that one bank holiday weekend, but one person was doing more than 200km an hour, you know so it’s not ‘Oh, I was just over’.”
Ms Hilman also cited drink/drug driving, failure to wear seat belts and drivers being distracted, including by phones, as other factors contributing to the rise in fatal incidents.
The chair of the Road Safety Authority (RSA), Liz O’Donnell, has called for “urgent” action to improve road safety, including a reduction in speed limits.
Asked if gardai supported reducing speed limits on rural roads, Ms Hilman said: “Ultimately the decision will be for government and then we will, as the national policing service, we will enforce whatever is decided, but yes, I do think that it has warranted looking at.”
Ms Hilman said the same approach would not work for every road.
“It’s not a one size fits all,” she said.
“But where that needs to happen, I think we do need to look at what historically has been happening on certain roads and what can we do, either by how they’re designed, by their speed and then education and then enforcement, how can we make those roads safer.”
Ms Hilman’s comments came after another senior garda urged passengers who do not feel safe to tell drivers to slow down, and warned drivers not to use their phones while driving.
“We take using our roads for granted sometimes,” Superintendent Liam Geraghty said.
“Using the road is probably the most dangerous thing you will do on any given day.
“We ask everybody to please take care on the roads.”
When asked what had caused the increase in road deaths this year, Mr Geraghty said there had been an increase in the number of collisions where there had been multiple fatalities.
He said: “Certainly across the border in Northern Ireland, we’re also seeing a very, very similar increase in road fatalities taking place over there.
“I haven’t seen full level research into why that is happening at the moment. But certainly our levels of drink and drug-driving seem to be increasing.”
Mr Geraghty said that as of Wednesday An Garda Síochána had carried out 27,000 checkpoints so far this year, and detected 5,100 people driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol, with a further 105,000 people detected breaking the speed limit.
More than 12,500 people have been issued with fixed charge penalty notices for using phones, but Mr Geraghty said a bigger problem was “distracted driving”.
He said that phones automatically connecting with a car, people watching videos while driving, and drivers being distracted by other things, such as by passengers in the car, are also a concern.
Mr Geraghty added: “A key feature in any road traffic collision is speed. So the basic message will be to people to slow down.
“That does not mean don’t break the speed limit. It means slow down and drive at an appropriate speed to the weather, the vehicle, the road and traffic conditions that you find yourself in at any particular time.”
He said 29 of the total number of people who had died on the roads this year were passengers.
Mr Geraghty said: “People who have no say in what has actually happened in relation to road traffic collisions – but they do have a say.
“If you’re the passenger in a vehicle, you have a say … you can speak up, you can ask the driver to slow down if you’re not feeling safe, you can ask them to drive a little bit more carefully.
“Drivers also need to take responsibility; it’s not just themselves, it’s the other people in their vehicle.”
He added: “It’s not a right to hold a driver’s licence, it’s a privilege.”
